SHE barrels through the bar and drives a path through marketing convention attendees dressed in prerequisite chinos and polo shirts.

Much like Moses. She is tiny. For those who broke glass with her in the 1980s, this is a shock. Hazel O'Connor back then was a figurehead, a goddess for those drowning in seas of Wham Duran Spandau schmaltz: raw, releasing soul through the medium of her lyrics and sandpaper vocals.

She's much the same now - more so for having been out on her own since the age of 16. For having endured rape, marriage break up, miscarriage, making a fortune for someone else, taking on court cases against music giants, and cancer. Her voice and story have developed, with a folk and classical influence being brought to bear through her decade long collaboration with harpist Cormac de Barra.

"My life has taught me that there are no safe havens. That was what I always craved. We're born alone and we die alone. It's taken me years to realise that uncertainty is all we really have.

Even when a great love affair is happening and all your endorphins are going like crazy, there's always the presentiment, for me, 'this is going to end'."

The '80s are barely over but they're the latest decade to be revived, and as one of its embodiments Hazel O'Connor finds herself in demand. Her gigs around Europe attract a mixture of the first glass breakers - thirtyand fortysomethings with blunted axes to grind who want to remember their passion and rage of two decades ago. Then there's a new group of fans - vinyl collectors, post punk archivists, teenagers dusting off their mum and dad's music and making it their own. Having learned to operate in her business after a long slow, painful exam period, she has begun to cash in on the credentials she earned when she was barely out of her teens.

Her Edinburgh show - Beyond Breaking Glass - was a humorous account of her crucifixion by the music business, her personal and professional losses. It featured all the songs, some new ones, puppetry - "because, let's face it, that's what I felt like" and Cormac's harp, the one she calls Matilda. And it gave her the second-time-round success currently being enjoyed by Madness et al. Except this time Hazel O'Connor has made a bit of money. Last time round she achieved notoriety and insolvency.

"It was bad. Because I had never earned anything for what I did I never put any value on money, or what I had done to earn it for other people. So it's a joy, this time, to be cheered at Glastonbury, to be selling my CDs, like a troubadour, to my fans at my own gigs. It gave me back a lot of the power I lost. I used to think I was useless, but I know that I am okay."

When you've lost millions in earnings it does tend to make you more appreciative of the thousands that come later:

"There was a time when I had a hole in my roof that I couldn't afford to fix and I had to leave to go to a gig to put food on the table. That meant I had to leave my house open to the elements, I was alone, scared and I cried my eyes out."

If Hazel now met Hazel who signed the contract, she would say: "Don't think the money doesn't matter. If you show them the money doesn't matter you show them you think you don't matter." Ironically she found her love of music again through her marriage break-up: "I was trying to find who I was again, so I started going to the Songwriter's Club. No mike, no lights, just performers testing their songs out on each other - Glen Hansard, Mundy and Damien Dempsey.

They inspired me so much I knew I could go in any direction I wanted to, in life and in music."

She credits her revival not just on the resurgence of '80s interest - but on Cormac's adaptability and virtuosity: "He was the first musician I met in ages who didn't come to me with his hand out looking for money up front. In fact he didn't get paid for a while."

There's a lot to fit in when you write about Hazel O'Connor. She left home for the first time at 16 and went to Morocco, where she was raped in broad daylight, she came home to art school and left after a year because she couldn't conform and went to Amsterdam where she made clothes and sold them. Then she ended up dancing in Beirut just before the civil war broke out. So she crossed the Sahara. Back in England she was a receptionist in the same record company that signed her up in what she now knows was her own blood.

She lives in rural south Wicklow, is a committed vegetarian and loves her mum:

"She knew I was always going to be myself and she never stood in the way of that. My dad died this year, it makes me appreciate her all the more. . . ." Her voice carries across the bar of the Brooklodge Hotel, creating a forcible silence in the market speak of the convention attendees. She is herself - a Killer Queen, the role she is due to play in the Snow White panto this year:

I know what she'll look like - a bit like the woman in The Matrix.

Long black shiny coat and fabulous vampish attitude.

From the seminal '80s film Breaking Glass to playing Dublin panto, alongside TV3 presenter Alan Hughes, in what essentially is a crack-up funny revue, with jokes for the adults and chants for the kids, she will wear herself well, always an individual, always unedited in her speech and inclinations.

When she looks at the new breed of people who want to be famous for the sake if it, it makes her wonder: "Mind you, they may well have their heads screwed on better than I did. I just wanted to do my music and so I made some stupid decisions, because the money didn't matter, and the fame was just a consequence."

Why did she move back to Ireland? Her parents lived in Coventry and that was where she was born? "Well at the time I had the cancer scare Louis Walsh was just about to become my agent. We'd travelled the highways and byways doing shows and his stock phrase was:

'It's alright Hazel'. Well he made it alright for me. It's always been a surprise to me that he made his millions on a facet of the music industry. His personal taste is catholic and discerning - he turned me onto fabulous Marianne Faithful songs like the Ballad of Lucy Jordan. He just plugged a hole in the market and fair play to him."

She is currently ballroom dancing with a fan who became a friend: "And I've learned not to lead, finally, after years of doing everything for myself I had to unlearn the instinct! I'm too pushy by the dancing standards!

It's been a life lesson for me. A lot of men have been de-bollocked by the modern world. We could all do with learning ballroom dancing before we get married!"

As she is talking the tape runs out and she automatically switches it over.

"What would I say to the girl who left home at 16? Good question. I wouldn't say don't go.

The summer before I had been raped in Morocco and I think, because of this experience, I felt a victim. It was a quick and painless act physically. But it makes me so angry that I didn't kick him or defend myself. It makes me hate me.

"I regret. . . not telling the truth about my feelings because I was afraid to be perceived as soft.

And I regret that I didn't need to be poor, I didn't need to be dragged through the courts, if I had been true to myself as my lovely mum had always told me to be. In March 1979 I took the call offering me the role in Breaking Glass because I was the holiday relief receptionist at my record company.

"I had always felt like I would fail, but at the audition I had been working on myself and visualised myself as being a success - then Toyah Wilcox walked in and I thought, no, this is over, but it wasn't. I didn't let it be. Then, while I was waiting two months to hear from them and had lost hope, my record company offered me a contract. I was told by my lawyer not to sign, because of clauses. But I felt insecure and they played on that. The day after I signed I heard from the film company, at home, that I was being considered for the lead role.

"I can't prove it. But I suspect they knew the offer was coming.

"The contracts I signed changed the course of my life. It meant I was never going to have financial security."

Now that the tide has turned she is more than grateful. She just bought an investment property in France and hopes to spend time out there each year.

The panto, which is staged at Liberty Hall Theatre, is one a number of future projects. She would like to marry again:

"I've been single for a long time; I lost my confidence in being in a relationship.

Sometimes in my marriage, when he was in a mean mood, my exhusband would tell me I was old, ugly and a has-been. Now, that wasn't often, but you only have to hear that a few times for some of it to stick.

"Then I lost our baby. There is nothing more horrible than being up here in the Wicklow hills when you need a hospital quick.

By the time the ambulance got to me I had already well lost the baby, half the contents of my womb were in the toilet, the rest went to Holles Street. The ambulance woman was lovely, kept telling me that it wasn't my fault. I still recognise the day I lost the baby. My baby would have been 15 now."

She and her husband then parted: "We didn't have animosity, but I had to let it go for a few months, to separate. Then we let it go completely. He met someone else, a lovely woman.

I've had one boyfriend, and another near boyfriend who turned out to be two-timing me.

"To be honest I went off men, and now, I think, if I meet someone who is kind to me, who gets me, I would be able to commit again. But until I find that I'm just not interested.

"I am a lot nearer to having a relationship again. The dancing has helped! I do feel very part of my home community in Wicklow - even though I know I am the mad one up the hill.

"But being honest, " and that is one thing Hazel O'Connor always is, "I think you're doing well if people think you're mad. It means you were born different and stayed different."

Then she drags me into a fabulous boutique called Tao - selling an Italian line called Save the Queen.

"It's not the British Queen, " she stresses. "It's the Queen of Legend."

And I know I've just met one.