Post by Dave on May 14, 2006 0:57:25 GMT
There is a fine and very long article about Katherine in the Scotsman today (Sunday) and there doesn't seem to be much (if any) sign of hype. There is some new information in it that I didn't know, and also a paragraph or two of weirdness in the middle. You'll know what I mean when you get to it! The link is here and the full article is below for posterity. Thanks to Google Alerts, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it! 
[/size][/quote]
Dave
Scotsman on Sunday
Sun 14 May 2006
Portrait: Simon Fowler
Sing when you're winning
CATHERINE DEVENEY
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT WRITER OF THE YEAR
WHEN did that happen? Opera getting sexy when no one was looking? The image of classical singing used to be 20-stone heroines playing ailing consumptives, and lardy heroes whose lips fa-la-lah-ed a heartrending "My darling, I wish we could be together", but whose bellies quivered a silent chorus of "but I have a pressing engagement with a four-cheese pizza and a double tiramisu". Bit of an image problem.
Then along came the stunning Katherine Jenkins, in posh frocks, and the boys from Il Divo, with all their continental smouldering (watch, you British men, and weep), or even - if you are the kind desperate enough to take Typhoo teabags with you abroad - our very own substitute, G4. Opera is the new rock'n'roll. Except that the purists say it's not opera, but rather some commercial manipulation thereof.
After an interview with Jenkins (bubbly but gentle, a kind of wide-eyed Bambi on speed - I'd tell you how delightfully nice she is, but 'nice' sounds like a gratuitous insult these days), I phone Tim Dean, head of opera at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. To the untrained ear, Jenkins' mezzo-soprano voice is rich and beautiful, worthy of the unprecedented six-album deal Universal Classics awarded her. But what do opera experts make of her? Momentary silence. "She has a very pretty voice," says Dean. "She pops up at rugby matches..." (She's the Welsh team mascot. Eat your heart out, Charlotte Church, despite your insider connections.) "But," Dean continues, "I haven't gone out of my way to listen to her. Life's too busy."
Ouch. Presumably, if Jenkins were regarded as the next Maria Callas, he would have gone out of his way to listen to her (although even Callas got turned down by opera companies oblivious to her talent). "There's an area of commercial development called opera, but it's not opera," continues Dean. "There's no way I am looking down my nose at these people, but there's a lot more to being an opera singer than belting out a few tunes. You have to be a consummate actor or actress, and be able to sing for two or three hours in five or six different languages. Opera is more than a kind of singing. It's a kind of theatre."
Opera purists may well view Jenkins in much the same way that art purists view Jack Vettriano. The people's choice is rarely the critics' choice. The fact remains that 25-year-old Jenkins is the fastest-selling classical singer since Maria Callas. She has just won the Brit award for best classical album for the second year running, and this month was one of the youngest people ever to be made an associate of the Royal Academy of Music in London, a special honour conferred on distinguished former students.
Jenkins knows the arguments - how she is just a blonde opera bimbo, famous for her looks as much as her voice. But she has ambitions. The mezzo-soprano voice, she explains, is the last to mature fully. She still takes singing lessons with her teacher, Beatrice Unsworth, from the Royal Academy. Eventually she hopes to take on serious, classical roles. The question is: does Jenkins have a serious, classical voice? "She has a very beautiful voice," argues Unsworth. "This is a voice that has had a tremendous impact on the general public. It communicates something to all sorts of people. If she chooses to go down the serious opera route, she'll be welcomed because the voice is there."
Jenkins says she is looking forward to it. "I'm desperate to do it. It's my intention by the time I'm 30 to play the role of Carmen or something like that. I know I'm up for a lot of criticism," she smiles, "but I quite like the challenge."
JENKINS crosses the bar of a London hotel like she is walking several feet above the ground on a cushion of cloud. There is a bounce to her step, a natural vivacity that emanates from sparkling blue eyes and a wide, genuine smile. But she also has a gentleness about her manner, a sincerity in conversation. "She has a lovely personality," says Unsworth. "I can't say anything unpleasant about Katherine because she never says anything bad about anyone else. She is fresh and honest and very funny."
At times, you might be fooled into thinking her manner bordered on the timorous. Ask her if going out to Iraq to entertain the troops was an indication of a political opinion about the war, and she gives one of those dreary answers about it "not being my place" to comment on the morality of it. Yawn. Why should she be any less entitled than anyone else to a view? But later in the conversation, her reluctance to make political comment on Iraq becomes more understandable. And it's not long before you begin to see a glint of steel in Jenkins; it's just untarnished by ruthlessness. There is, for example, formidable personal discipline. We meet in a bar, but she drinks alcohol only a few times a year. Her diet is strict; she avoids dairy products, which can create catarrh problems for singers. "She's very self-disciplined," says Unsworth.
But there is also something about Jenkins' voice that suggests a dichotomy between the young, bubbly woman who smiles at the world and her inner self. It is, isn't it, a strikingly emotional voice? "I think that hits the nail on the head," agrees Unsworth, who worked in the studio with Jenkins on her albums and was struck by her intensity. "On every retake she was totally into the piece, absolutely emotionally committed. You really sensed an artist who was giving her all, who was giving the truth."
Perhaps the inspirational source for this is her father, who died when Jenkins was just 15. Didn't she dedicate an album to him? Every album, she corrects with a smile. He was a significant influence on her. Today, she says quietly, is the tenth anniversary of his death. "I know how much he wanted this for me, and believed in me, and I try to put my heart and everything into it."
Jenkins grew up in the small Welsh market town of Neath, singing in the choir at the local church where her mother was a Sunday-school teacher. A former Choirgirl of the Year, her singing career started at four, when her mother taught her 'Going Down the Garden to Eat the Worms' for a school show. "Everyone just burst into applause because it sounded hilarious," she recalls. And from then on she sang whenever she could, ultimately winning a scholarship to London's Royal Academy of Music.
When she was eight, her mother went back to work and her father, who was 24 years older than his wife, took early retirement. Jenkins had singing activities every night after school and it was her father who taxied her around. "He used to say, 'If you work hard, if you put the effort in, I know it's going to happen for you.' There are positive and negative ways parents can support children. My parents never pushed me. They always held me back for a second and said, 'Are you sure this is what you want?' But they gave me money for lessons, and my dad drove me round, and I can't even begin to say how much that has made me today."
But in 1996 she and her family received devastating news. Her father had cancer. He was hilarious, her dad, such an exuberant character that she had barely registered the fact that he was 70. "He was so... present... so with us all the time that I don't think it was ever really a big issue with me."
The family were told he had months to live, but it was only weeks. "It was such a shock. He died two weeks before I sat my GCSEs. He wanted me to do well at school, used to help me with my work, and so you think, 'Do I throw myself into my exams' - which is what I did - 'or leave it?' It was a really hard time."
She was unable to sing in person for her father's funeral, but a tape was made with her sister playing the organ and Jenkins singing. But she sang for him often as a child, and she still sings for him now. "I always sing for him. I'm convinced he's listening. I've had so much good fortune that I feel like someone's guiding me, and it has got to be him. Before a big concert, where I really have to pull out the stops, I say, 'Come on Dad, help me on this one.'
Singing is both a physical and emotional process for her, but mainly the latter. "I tend to pick songs that for some reason always get me in the heart. Things that are really happy, or a melody that when you hear it you just know people are going to cry. I love things like that. The most important thing is to get the emotion across."
At the Royal Academy the emphasis was on classical training, on learning to sing in Italian, French and German. Nobody ever mentioned commercial recording, but Jenkins always knew she wanted to make CDs. A friend, who had produced two of Tina Turner's number ones, suggested she make a demo tape. She went to the studio, just for the experience. Several months later, the demo was in the hands of Universal Classics. By this time, Jenkins had graduated from the Royal Academy and was teaching - which she loved and hopes to do more of - hoping to finance a masters degree.
Fate intervened and the children lost Miss to fame and fortune. "I got a call from Universal Classics, saying they had heard my demo. They wanted me to go in and have a chat with them." She was then asked to perform a live showcase for the record company bosses. "It was the most nerve-racking thing. They sat there completely pokerfaced, and after I sang they said, 'Thanks, we'll let you know.'"
Jenkins went away and cried. "I was heartbroken. I thought I obviously hadn't done very well, because they weren't happy." But within an hour she had received a phone call. "They said, 'We'd like to offer you a six-album deal.'"
Does she resent the suggestion that her looks as well as her voice swung that contract? "I am not naïve. I sensed that they were looking for a marketing aspect." Jenkins is happy to accept her appeal is a package. "I have always been a girl's girl, and I love things that are glamorous - hair and make-up. You should always try to remain true to yourself. This is me."
It is true that the first thing Jenkins had talked about when she sat down with me was her preparations for the Brits: getting her highlights done, "going glam, as usual" in a striking fuchsia dress; going to Bulgari to choose jewellery to borrow. It was like being in a sweetie shop, she had laughed. There are those who think serious singers should get excited by Bizet, not by baubles and ballgowns, but Jenkins is loving every minute of it all.
And why shouldn't she? It's fun, but she keeps it in perspective. She has been with her boyfriend, Steve Hart, a member of pop group Worlds Apart, for five years, and right at the start he gave her good advice. "Don't believe the hype," he said. She never has.
But she believes image is important in drawing people to classical music. "When I first made the records I told people I was a classical artist, and they said, 'No, you have to be 25 stone to be an opera singer, and also rich.' I came from a normal background in Wales. I was fortunate I got into classical music. I feel that if people identified with the artists, and they were maybe a little more accessible, they would love it like I love it."
JUST as black highlights white, here is some dark background to illuminate Jenkins. By showing what she's not, it somehow highlights what she is. A while ago she was asked to take part in a TV programme in which celebrities are filmed undergoing a process of regression into past lives. Jenkins, although a church-goer, was fascinated by the notion and agreed.
There she was, in the chair, completely aware of everything that was going on, thinking, "How very embarrassing, I'm not hypnotised." And then suddenly questions were being fired at her, and she heard herself answering as Sarah, a farmer's wife. She was describing the American plains at the end of the 17th century. Later, a historian discovered her accounts were factually accurate. "It was bizarre. I was telling historical things about where I was - stuff I didn't know anything about. I don't know what to make of it, really. My mum thinks it's a load of mumbo-jumbo. She tells me off. 'Load of old rubbish!' she says."
Jenkins is close to her mother, who works as a mammographer. "We were always close, but when you lose one parent the other becomes even more important. I will always look after Mum. I've just bought her a new house in Neath. I just want to look after her. She's on her own, and I want to make sure she's happy."
Her mother dismisses Sarah, but what is intriguing is how different from Jenkins this alter-ego is. Jenkins slips between the first and third person when talking about Sarah, uncertain of the real connection with herself. "I was quite lonely. I was in the middle of nowhere on this little farm with nothing to do. It's so not me - the complete opposite to my character." Was she married? "I was in an arranged marriage, so it was a little bit lonely." She didn't love him, then? "Well, yes, she did, but it wasn't... She was away from her parents in the middle of nowhere, and she had the children and that was it. She was a completely different person to me. I really think I make the most of everything, so it was weird. Hers was quite a sad life, actually. All of a sudden I was crying my heart out. She was not fulfilled - that was the feeling I got."
Maybe Jenkins learned the lessons of a past life, because she has got it right this time. "I'm a really happy person. I love life," she says. Far from living in isolation, a sense of community is hugely important to her. She found it hard when she first moved to London, because of the anonymity. Now she has lived in the same part of north London for five years, considers it a small village, and knows her neighbours and the local shopkeepers. That's the way she likes to live.
The fact that her partner is a musician has helped; he understands the pressures of the business and accepts that she has to tour for weeks on end. "It's really important to me to have my independence and career," says Jenkins, "but I really enjoy having that one person you can tell everything to and who is always there for you. It can be quite stressful and lonely sometimes, so it's nice to be able to call up and say, 'I'm miles away!' and talk in the middle of the night."
Hart warned her about artists getting carried away, becoming different people. "I don't see why this need change me," she says. According to Unsworth, it certainly hasn't. The first year she won a Brit, her mother organised a coach trip from Neath for 40 of her family and friends to come and share the evening with her in London. "Everyone who was important to me was there."
In fact, it was family feeling, not political instinct, that made her accept that Iraq invitation. "I had just finished this big tour, and it was two days before Christmas. My family means so much to me, and these people were out there - and I can tell you it's not the nicest place - away from their families over Christmas. I just wanted to say, 'You're not forgotten.' And it was one of the best days of my life. It seemed like such a small thing I did, but it meant such a lot to them. They gave me presents, wrote me cards - I even had my own set of desert combats with 'Jenkins' on them." But her helicopter was attacked by a missile and plunged 1,300m in seconds. Wasn't she frightened? Oh, yes, she was screaming. "But it hasn't put me off. I want to go back."
Yes, she has her own steel, Jenkins. She knows what she wants. Next year she intends to spend the first four months trying to crack America. But she won't ever do a Charlotte Church and move into pop. She listens to Kelly Clarkson and the Kaiser Chiefs, to James Blunt and Mariah Carey, but she doesn't want to join their world. "I can say that for sure. It's just not me. I'll save it for the shower."
But she does want to be Carmen. And then we really will see if she's just a pretty voice or not. Some may have already dismissed her, but it's not over until the thin lady sings.
• Katherine Jenkins sings at the Westin Turnberry Resort, Ayrshire (01655 333991), on May 26
This article: living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=713272006
Last updated: 12-May-06 22:19 BST
Sun 14 May 2006
Portrait: Simon Fowler
Sing when you're winning
CATHERINE DEVENEY
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT WRITER OF THE YEAR
WHEN did that happen? Opera getting sexy when no one was looking? The image of classical singing used to be 20-stone heroines playing ailing consumptives, and lardy heroes whose lips fa-la-lah-ed a heartrending "My darling, I wish we could be together", but whose bellies quivered a silent chorus of "but I have a pressing engagement with a four-cheese pizza and a double tiramisu". Bit of an image problem.
Then along came the stunning Katherine Jenkins, in posh frocks, and the boys from Il Divo, with all their continental smouldering (watch, you British men, and weep), or even - if you are the kind desperate enough to take Typhoo teabags with you abroad - our very own substitute, G4. Opera is the new rock'n'roll. Except that the purists say it's not opera, but rather some commercial manipulation thereof.
After an interview with Jenkins (bubbly but gentle, a kind of wide-eyed Bambi on speed - I'd tell you how delightfully nice she is, but 'nice' sounds like a gratuitous insult these days), I phone Tim Dean, head of opera at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. To the untrained ear, Jenkins' mezzo-soprano voice is rich and beautiful, worthy of the unprecedented six-album deal Universal Classics awarded her. But what do opera experts make of her? Momentary silence. "She has a very pretty voice," says Dean. "She pops up at rugby matches..." (She's the Welsh team mascot. Eat your heart out, Charlotte Church, despite your insider connections.) "But," Dean continues, "I haven't gone out of my way to listen to her. Life's too busy."
Ouch. Presumably, if Jenkins were regarded as the next Maria Callas, he would have gone out of his way to listen to her (although even Callas got turned down by opera companies oblivious to her talent). "There's an area of commercial development called opera, but it's not opera," continues Dean. "There's no way I am looking down my nose at these people, but there's a lot more to being an opera singer than belting out a few tunes. You have to be a consummate actor or actress, and be able to sing for two or three hours in five or six different languages. Opera is more than a kind of singing. It's a kind of theatre."
Opera purists may well view Jenkins in much the same way that art purists view Jack Vettriano. The people's choice is rarely the critics' choice. The fact remains that 25-year-old Jenkins is the fastest-selling classical singer since Maria Callas. She has just won the Brit award for best classical album for the second year running, and this month was one of the youngest people ever to be made an associate of the Royal Academy of Music in London, a special honour conferred on distinguished former students.
Jenkins knows the arguments - how she is just a blonde opera bimbo, famous for her looks as much as her voice. But she has ambitions. The mezzo-soprano voice, she explains, is the last to mature fully. She still takes singing lessons with her teacher, Beatrice Unsworth, from the Royal Academy. Eventually she hopes to take on serious, classical roles. The question is: does Jenkins have a serious, classical voice? "She has a very beautiful voice," argues Unsworth. "This is a voice that has had a tremendous impact on the general public. It communicates something to all sorts of people. If she chooses to go down the serious opera route, she'll be welcomed because the voice is there."
Jenkins says she is looking forward to it. "I'm desperate to do it. It's my intention by the time I'm 30 to play the role of Carmen or something like that. I know I'm up for a lot of criticism," she smiles, "but I quite like the challenge."
JENKINS crosses the bar of a London hotel like she is walking several feet above the ground on a cushion of cloud. There is a bounce to her step, a natural vivacity that emanates from sparkling blue eyes and a wide, genuine smile. But she also has a gentleness about her manner, a sincerity in conversation. "She has a lovely personality," says Unsworth. "I can't say anything unpleasant about Katherine because she never says anything bad about anyone else. She is fresh and honest and very funny."
At times, you might be fooled into thinking her manner bordered on the timorous. Ask her if going out to Iraq to entertain the troops was an indication of a political opinion about the war, and she gives one of those dreary answers about it "not being my place" to comment on the morality of it. Yawn. Why should she be any less entitled than anyone else to a view? But later in the conversation, her reluctance to make political comment on Iraq becomes more understandable. And it's not long before you begin to see a glint of steel in Jenkins; it's just untarnished by ruthlessness. There is, for example, formidable personal discipline. We meet in a bar, but she drinks alcohol only a few times a year. Her diet is strict; she avoids dairy products, which can create catarrh problems for singers. "She's very self-disciplined," says Unsworth.
But there is also something about Jenkins' voice that suggests a dichotomy between the young, bubbly woman who smiles at the world and her inner self. It is, isn't it, a strikingly emotional voice? "I think that hits the nail on the head," agrees Unsworth, who worked in the studio with Jenkins on her albums and was struck by her intensity. "On every retake she was totally into the piece, absolutely emotionally committed. You really sensed an artist who was giving her all, who was giving the truth."
Perhaps the inspirational source for this is her father, who died when Jenkins was just 15. Didn't she dedicate an album to him? Every album, she corrects with a smile. He was a significant influence on her. Today, she says quietly, is the tenth anniversary of his death. "I know how much he wanted this for me, and believed in me, and I try to put my heart and everything into it."
Jenkins grew up in the small Welsh market town of Neath, singing in the choir at the local church where her mother was a Sunday-school teacher. A former Choirgirl of the Year, her singing career started at four, when her mother taught her 'Going Down the Garden to Eat the Worms' for a school show. "Everyone just burst into applause because it sounded hilarious," she recalls. And from then on she sang whenever she could, ultimately winning a scholarship to London's Royal Academy of Music.
When she was eight, her mother went back to work and her father, who was 24 years older than his wife, took early retirement. Jenkins had singing activities every night after school and it was her father who taxied her around. "He used to say, 'If you work hard, if you put the effort in, I know it's going to happen for you.' There are positive and negative ways parents can support children. My parents never pushed me. They always held me back for a second and said, 'Are you sure this is what you want?' But they gave me money for lessons, and my dad drove me round, and I can't even begin to say how much that has made me today."
But in 1996 she and her family received devastating news. Her father had cancer. He was hilarious, her dad, such an exuberant character that she had barely registered the fact that he was 70. "He was so... present... so with us all the time that I don't think it was ever really a big issue with me."
The family were told he had months to live, but it was only weeks. "It was such a shock. He died two weeks before I sat my GCSEs. He wanted me to do well at school, used to help me with my work, and so you think, 'Do I throw myself into my exams' - which is what I did - 'or leave it?' It was a really hard time."
She was unable to sing in person for her father's funeral, but a tape was made with her sister playing the organ and Jenkins singing. But she sang for him often as a child, and she still sings for him now. "I always sing for him. I'm convinced he's listening. I've had so much good fortune that I feel like someone's guiding me, and it has got to be him. Before a big concert, where I really have to pull out the stops, I say, 'Come on Dad, help me on this one.'
Singing is both a physical and emotional process for her, but mainly the latter. "I tend to pick songs that for some reason always get me in the heart. Things that are really happy, or a melody that when you hear it you just know people are going to cry. I love things like that. The most important thing is to get the emotion across."
At the Royal Academy the emphasis was on classical training, on learning to sing in Italian, French and German. Nobody ever mentioned commercial recording, but Jenkins always knew she wanted to make CDs. A friend, who had produced two of Tina Turner's number ones, suggested she make a demo tape. She went to the studio, just for the experience. Several months later, the demo was in the hands of Universal Classics. By this time, Jenkins had graduated from the Royal Academy and was teaching - which she loved and hopes to do more of - hoping to finance a masters degree.
Fate intervened and the children lost Miss to fame and fortune. "I got a call from Universal Classics, saying they had heard my demo. They wanted me to go in and have a chat with them." She was then asked to perform a live showcase for the record company bosses. "It was the most nerve-racking thing. They sat there completely pokerfaced, and after I sang they said, 'Thanks, we'll let you know.'"
Jenkins went away and cried. "I was heartbroken. I thought I obviously hadn't done very well, because they weren't happy." But within an hour she had received a phone call. "They said, 'We'd like to offer you a six-album deal.'"
Does she resent the suggestion that her looks as well as her voice swung that contract? "I am not naïve. I sensed that they were looking for a marketing aspect." Jenkins is happy to accept her appeal is a package. "I have always been a girl's girl, and I love things that are glamorous - hair and make-up. You should always try to remain true to yourself. This is me."
It is true that the first thing Jenkins had talked about when she sat down with me was her preparations for the Brits: getting her highlights done, "going glam, as usual" in a striking fuchsia dress; going to Bulgari to choose jewellery to borrow. It was like being in a sweetie shop, she had laughed. There are those who think serious singers should get excited by Bizet, not by baubles and ballgowns, but Jenkins is loving every minute of it all.
And why shouldn't she? It's fun, but she keeps it in perspective. She has been with her boyfriend, Steve Hart, a member of pop group Worlds Apart, for five years, and right at the start he gave her good advice. "Don't believe the hype," he said. She never has.
But she believes image is important in drawing people to classical music. "When I first made the records I told people I was a classical artist, and they said, 'No, you have to be 25 stone to be an opera singer, and also rich.' I came from a normal background in Wales. I was fortunate I got into classical music. I feel that if people identified with the artists, and they were maybe a little more accessible, they would love it like I love it."
JUST as black highlights white, here is some dark background to illuminate Jenkins. By showing what she's not, it somehow highlights what she is. A while ago she was asked to take part in a TV programme in which celebrities are filmed undergoing a process of regression into past lives. Jenkins, although a church-goer, was fascinated by the notion and agreed.
There she was, in the chair, completely aware of everything that was going on, thinking, "How very embarrassing, I'm not hypnotised." And then suddenly questions were being fired at her, and she heard herself answering as Sarah, a farmer's wife. She was describing the American plains at the end of the 17th century. Later, a historian discovered her accounts were factually accurate. "It was bizarre. I was telling historical things about where I was - stuff I didn't know anything about. I don't know what to make of it, really. My mum thinks it's a load of mumbo-jumbo. She tells me off. 'Load of old rubbish!' she says."
Jenkins is close to her mother, who works as a mammographer. "We were always close, but when you lose one parent the other becomes even more important. I will always look after Mum. I've just bought her a new house in Neath. I just want to look after her. She's on her own, and I want to make sure she's happy."
Her mother dismisses Sarah, but what is intriguing is how different from Jenkins this alter-ego is. Jenkins slips between the first and third person when talking about Sarah, uncertain of the real connection with herself. "I was quite lonely. I was in the middle of nowhere on this little farm with nothing to do. It's so not me - the complete opposite to my character." Was she married? "I was in an arranged marriage, so it was a little bit lonely." She didn't love him, then? "Well, yes, she did, but it wasn't... She was away from her parents in the middle of nowhere, and she had the children and that was it. She was a completely different person to me. I really think I make the most of everything, so it was weird. Hers was quite a sad life, actually. All of a sudden I was crying my heart out. She was not fulfilled - that was the feeling I got."
Maybe Jenkins learned the lessons of a past life, because she has got it right this time. "I'm a really happy person. I love life," she says. Far from living in isolation, a sense of community is hugely important to her. She found it hard when she first moved to London, because of the anonymity. Now she has lived in the same part of north London for five years, considers it a small village, and knows her neighbours and the local shopkeepers. That's the way she likes to live.
The fact that her partner is a musician has helped; he understands the pressures of the business and accepts that she has to tour for weeks on end. "It's really important to me to have my independence and career," says Jenkins, "but I really enjoy having that one person you can tell everything to and who is always there for you. It can be quite stressful and lonely sometimes, so it's nice to be able to call up and say, 'I'm miles away!' and talk in the middle of the night."
Hart warned her about artists getting carried away, becoming different people. "I don't see why this need change me," she says. According to Unsworth, it certainly hasn't. The first year she won a Brit, her mother organised a coach trip from Neath for 40 of her family and friends to come and share the evening with her in London. "Everyone who was important to me was there."
In fact, it was family feeling, not political instinct, that made her accept that Iraq invitation. "I had just finished this big tour, and it was two days before Christmas. My family means so much to me, and these people were out there - and I can tell you it's not the nicest place - away from their families over Christmas. I just wanted to say, 'You're not forgotten.' And it was one of the best days of my life. It seemed like such a small thing I did, but it meant such a lot to them. They gave me presents, wrote me cards - I even had my own set of desert combats with 'Jenkins' on them." But her helicopter was attacked by a missile and plunged 1,300m in seconds. Wasn't she frightened? Oh, yes, she was screaming. "But it hasn't put me off. I want to go back."
Yes, she has her own steel, Jenkins. She knows what she wants. Next year she intends to spend the first four months trying to crack America. But she won't ever do a Charlotte Church and move into pop. She listens to Kelly Clarkson and the Kaiser Chiefs, to James Blunt and Mariah Carey, but she doesn't want to join their world. "I can say that for sure. It's just not me. I'll save it for the shower."
But she does want to be Carmen. And then we really will see if she's just a pretty voice or not. Some may have already dismissed her, but it's not over until the thin lady sings.
• Katherine Jenkins sings at the Westin Turnberry Resort, Ayrshire (01655 333991), on May 26
This article: living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=713272006
Last updated: 12-May-06 22:19 BST
Dave
