I only met her once - and that was more than thirty years ago. When I just started to work as a journalist for a very edgy new women´s magazine. As we were a young team at "VIVA", with a cool editor, we were allowed to do all kinds of stories you would never consider mainstream. You just had to fight for what you thought was relevant. And that was it.

As I always considered Patti La Belle my personal hero, it took me exactly five minutes to talk the team into doing that interview and three days later I met her at a precious Hotel Suite in Hamburg.

The interview then - as well as the feature at the New York Times recently - was about one of the true legends of Philadelphia Soul.

When I asked her about her heroes at the end of our conversation, she went: "My hero? I don´t know about that, I am a leader, you know, not a follower."

Read the interview and listen to some of her music. There is no better antidepressant this winter.