Nerina Pallot listings

Nerina Pallot is a British musician who comes from a little island in the English Channel called Jersey, where the name Pallot is about as exotic as Smith anywhere else on the planet. Everybody knows everybody, everybody is quite possibly related to everybody, but this means that you can walk down the high street and see all your mates, and meet your future spouse in primary school. (True story, enquire within for further details.)

When she was a teenager, she moved to England (where she originally popped out) and apart from a brief sojourn in Hollywood (she is sooooo not Hollywood) has lived there ever since. She has been known to get all misty eyed and recite the same Wordsworth poem everyone else seems to have learnt at school (maybe the only one, actually the only good one; she thinks Wordsworth is a bit poncey and daffodils are nice and all, but they're not that nice) on Westminster bridge, because she loves London so. This is usually after a few drinks though. (The standing on the bridge bit, she loves London all the time, and even more after imbibing.)

In 2001, she released her first album, Dear Frustrated Superstar, which she disowned for a bit because nobody really bought it and it got some dodgy reviews, which is a shame because it's a lovely album really and nobody should disown something because they might be the only person who likes it. Perhaps it is time, or age, or lost brain cells, or because Gary Barlow appears to have been inspired by it, but while she thinks that title is still a bit silly and its meaning immediately misconstrued - it's addressed to YOU, dear listener, YOU; You are the frustrated superstar in this equation - Nerina put it on her gramophone the other day and did not immediately remove it.

Anyhoo, apart from some ill-fated appearances on Saturday morning telly, Nerina scuttled off, had a little sulk, threatened to jack it all in and flounced off to university to study for an English degree. Her sulk didn't last long (all that pouting was making her jaw ache) and she took to timidly tipping her toe in the great green swimming pool of music once again. Writing songs as a diversion from essays on Mediaeval Epic poems (yaaaaawwwwwn) instead of as a real job meant she started to have fun again, and as the unbridled japes continued, she realised one day that she had written a whole album. This album (originally titled "I want the world to love me"), released in 2006, was called Fires, and all frog-like, spawned the hit singles Everybody's Gone To War and the Ivor Novello nominated Sophia. (If this was a proper press release, one could add Learning to Breathe as a hit single, but while 72 is a perfectly nice number, there are many other ways to describe it and hit would not necessarily be the first word that springs to mind. It did have a lovely vinyl gate-fold sleeve with Nerina in a sumptuous pink frock, mind.) Lots of excellent things happened at this time, including a 2007 Brit Award nomination for Best British Female, but all Nerina really remembers is being very, very scared on Never Mind the Buzzcocks and having to fight very hard to stop the overwhelming urge to ask Terry Wogan if it's a toupé or not when she met him on Children in Need.