With pale skin, blood red lipstick, heavy eyes, and jet black hair embellished with a curled whisp of blonde at the front stretching from her forehead to the sky, Imelda May is not exactly your typical shrinking violet, introspective female singer-songwriter. As a member of Jools Holland's band once said, "you're trashy in a sexy way, and I mean that in the nicest way possible" (to which she replied, that he reminded her of a pimp "in the nicest way possible".)

The 34-year-old has been gigging long enough to get better and worse remarks than that, and last week, she was finally rewarded for her work with a gong for Best Irish Female at the Meteor Music Awards.

It has been a long time coming. Imelda grew up in the Liberties, fostering music from a young age. Her father, married to her mother for 50 years, was a dance teacher before becoming a painter and decorator (he worked with Larry Gogan on the programme Shall We Dance.) At night, she would lie in bed with her mother with the radio to their ears singing for hours. Her aunts and uncles were all musical too, and inspired by Billie Holiday, Imelda decided singing was what she wanted to do.

Her parents claim they always knew she would be special at what she did after a trip to Rome with the girl guides ended up with Imelda being cradled in the arms of Pope John Paul II.

Her first paid gig came at age 14, when she got £40 for singing a Findus fish fingers ad jingle into a microphone at Windmill Lane studios with some friends and a neighbour.

The rest of the Liberties knew she would be a star too, and got behind her with only the strength that a tightly-knit, solid community can do. When she began to gig regularly in Bruxelles – the rocker bar off Grafton Street, which now sits behind a statue of Phil Lynott – everywhere from the local shoe shop to the butchers would carry posters advertising her shows. Even the weekly pamphlets in St Catherine's Church lent their back page to an ad for a gig.

Imelda's style is unusual but timeless. She sings rockabilly and blues, in a voice that can veer between tough and powerful to soft and
tender. Her tight band ? which conveniently also features husband Darrel Higham on guitar whom she met through her brother-in-law – provide the back-up for songs about love and good times.

Tunes like 'Falling In Love With
You Again' contrast with the more raucous 'Johnny Got A Boom Boom'. She plays bodhrán on stage too, a remarkable visual contrast of a beautiful woman in a leopard skin dress, whacking away at a drum while singing old school rock and roll, blues and rockabilly.

Lyrically, much of her material is inspired by her husband. On The Late Late Show, she described her methods to Pat Kenny saying that there
aren't enough love songs written about long-term love, rather than just falling for someone for the first time. She gestured to her parents and her aunts and uncles' relationships as examples of repetitive love that lasts. She says it's the same with her husband, adding that although he has a hard surface, underneath he is "a teddy bear," having once wanted to see her so much, he sold his car to buy a ticket to fly to where she was.

Around the time of the Bruxelles gigs, Imelda claims her best advice about how to channel emotion came from her father after she traumatically broke up with a boyfriend. In tears on the way to a gig, her father asked if she was heartbroken. She said she was, utterly. He said: "Good, you'll be able to sing the blues better now."

And she did.

Her whole family supported
her continuously throughout her musical journey, with her uncle Kevin known for hanging around outside the RTÉ radio centre, pushing Imelda May CDs into DJs' and presenters' hands.

May moved to London at the end of the 90s, and plied her trade there, playing pubs, clubs and burlesque shows (during one memorable burlesque gig, a spark flew down her throat while she was singing after one of the performers took an angle grinder to a metal belt over her crotch), endearing audiences and gaining fans in the right places.

Eventually, last year, Jools Holland made that all important call, and invited her on Later... to perform two songs from her album Love Tattoo. Jeff Beck, another of the guests on that night, told Holland he had only come to see her.

Holland also recruited Imelda for a series of support dates that went down a storm, and eventually the girl from the Liberties ended up in the Albert Hall.

Her parents came over for the concert, and Imelda nearly had to stop singing from laughter when she spotted her mother, a staunch Republican, sitting in the Queen's box in the famous concert hall.

Since then, she's appeared on BBC Radio 2, the Late Late Show and RTÉ's Other Voices, eventually scooping the award at the Meteors last week, her popularity compounded by the fact that the award is decided by a public vote.

The key to her success is that although she is singing a rather old style of music, Imelda makes it relevant by putting her own twist on it. Her voice is the best instrument in her band, and she herself is extremely outgoing; humorous, personable, social, a good conversationalist, flirtatious and gracious on stage.

Now booked up with gigs until August, it's almost certain that
the gigs and the breaks will keep coming. While it seems on the surface that she's had something of an overnight success, as she would say herself, it's an overnight success that took a lifetime to achieve.

There is cunning there too,
and none of the naivety that musicians born yesterday harbour. She knows how to work it, and man, does she.

CV

Born Imelda Clabby in 1974, in the Liberties, Dublin, the youngest of five children

Career Long-time working musician who finally got a break last year with an appearsnce on Later... with Jools Holland.

Personal life Married to Darrel Higham, the guitarist in her band

In the news She won
Best Irish Female at the Meteor Music Awards
last week