ATHENS (AFP): Nana Mouskouri, one of the best-selling singers of all time, returned to the stage in her native Greece on Monday as part of a tour to celebrate her 80th birthday. Ahead of a concert at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens, where six years ago she bid goodbye to the music industry, the icon known for her signature black-rimmed glasses and marble-like profile, admitted leaving was a mistake. ‘I want to be clear: six years ago, at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, it was goodbye.
ageing, when the world I belonged to had disappeared,’ she told the Kathimerini newspaper. ‘But that decision cost me dear.’  Mouskouri, whose signature tunes include ‘White Roses from Athens,’ and the love song from the cult French musical ‘Les Parapluies de Cherbourg’ (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), said retiring after half a century had damaged her health. ‘I was always with the doctor my body was hurting, my back ached,’ she said, adding that she had experienced feelings of hopelessness and depression after leaving the stage.