Name: Beryl Vangou
Occupation: Professional singer/teacher of piano and singing

1. One food item you can not live without?
Can't think of anything!

2. Finish this sentence: "In the kitchen I am…"
…interested in making my meals both healthy and tasty

3. Best thing about living in Melbourne?
I've travelled a lot but never felt 'at home' anywhere else. One thing I like is to live in a city by the sea. I've seen quite a bit of Australia but never felt the desire to live anywhere else.

4. If you were a vegetable what would you be?
Do I have to choose? I like them all.

5. Best thing about being vegan?
I feel linked to all the creatures and nature on the planet and am not involved in killing them, much less eating them.

6. What are you currently reading?
Just started The Ascent of Man by J.Bronowski. A book about the 13-part series on BBC TV in the 1970s. A bit heavy going so don't know if I'll read it all. I usually enjoy reading murder mysteries.

7. Who would you like to trade places with for a day?
Can't think of anyone!

8. What would be the title of your autobiography?
Life is never boring.

9. Favourite place to have a meal?
Soulmama, St Kilda

10. One thing that would make the world a better place?
Halving the world population

11. How and why did you become vegan?
I'd heard of vegetarianism but although I loved animals I didn't think it was necessary to go to the length of not eating them, however, in 1959, just after I moved to Paris from London (to study with a singing teacher there) I was reading literature on the subject and became inspired to become vegetarian and stopped eating animals overnight.

Shortly afterwards I was impressed to become vegan and did so. However, after marrying a rather domineering Frenchman he decided I should return to eating cheese and other dairy items. So I agreed, but over the years I always regretted I had done so, because of the awful cruelties involved. Then, bringing up 3 children entirely on my own I was too occupied to make the change to being a vegan again and it was only 16 years ago that I did so.

12. Tell us a bit about yourself…
I sang in public from the age of 12 and was quite well-known during my teens, singing at the Palais, Regent and State cinemas with orchestras, and all the Melbourne radio stations and concerts, etc all over Victoria, and also a stint in Sydney when I was 16.

In 1952 I went to London and toured with a couple of shows, one called "The Aussie Show" as we were all from Australia. With the other show I toured all over England, Scotland and Wales, and pantomime in London, etc. Also, I replaced Horrie Dargie in his group shortly before I had to return to Australia due to a death in the family. But itchy feet took me back to London after a year.

Already I had hitchhiked around many European countries and when I returned to London I bought a Lambretta motor scooter and rode that everywhere, including down through Morocco as far as Casablanca and when I moved to Paris I kept riding it for quite some time (until I became pregnant with my first child).

This is a condensed profile but enough, I think, to show you that I have led an exciting life. Nowadays I go to a couple of groups at U3A and have quite a large garden to look after. I have fed possums for years but they stopped coming to my verandah when workmen pulled down the next-door house and a new place is being built now, but I have birds coming all day long – including a family of magpies and several noisy miners (NOT the Indian kind).I can watch them from inside the window so have a constant entertainment from seeing them.