Introduction

Don't know where you are
This heart is bound from heaven
This love for you
This faith is true
Forever in time
I hope that you're not far
I'll find you.

November 2004

The following story is reproduced by kind permission of the Sunday Mirror.

REAL LIFE: DETERMINED PARENTS - as told to Julie Burniston.

MARIA, KEEDIE'S MUM:

'From the moment Keedie could walk and talk, she showed all the signs of being a performer. I have vivid memories of her aged three, pushing her brother and sisters out of the way when I got out the camera, so she could be at the front of the photo. She was such a tiny thing, but she was full of confidence and had a huge voice. My husband Gary and I were stunned as she sang along to opera star Maria Callas and belted out pop songs.

Gary named Keedie after his favourite singer, Kiki Dee, so I suppose it was fitting she loved being the centre of attention. At school, Keedie always took the lead roles in plays, and her teachers told us they thought she had star quality. We'd have loved to send her to stage school, but we couldn't afford it. Gary was working all hours as a builder and every penny was taken up paying for our rented home. But we were determined to do all we could to develop her amazing talent.

Gary and I have never been scared of taking risks. We'd married within seven weeks of meeting and moved to Devon from Wolverhampton when Keedie was 18 months old. But things went wrong almost straight away. After selling our three-bed Wolverhampton semi for £18,000 all we could afford was a caravan on a holiday site in Paignton. We barely had a penny left after Gary had set up his building company, but despite this, we had a happy home. We encouraged Keedie with her singing and Friday nights were sacred - Gary would get out his old albums for Keedie to sing along to 60s girl bands, such as The Ronettes and The Shirelles.

After a year, I got a part-time job in a chip shop and Gary secured a big contract. Encouraged by the promise of money to come, we rented a house in Brixham. But unfortunately, at just 40 years old, Gary had a heart attack and we had to sell everything we owned to prevent his firm going bankrupt. We couldn't afford our rent, and I was pregnant with my fourth child, Nadine. There were many tears, but we stayed strong and thankfully someone offered us the use of a house Gary was doing up to live in until we got back on our feet.

Despite the hardship, Keedie's singing talent grew. One day, when she was 10, I heard GMTV were doing a karaoke competition in Devon. Keedie was desperate to take part, but we didn't have money for petrol, so we got up at 4am to walk miles to the venue. On the way, I found a £5 note, Keedie was thrilled. "Ring Dad and tell him to put petrol in the car and come and watch me," she said.

Keedie had to wait hours before she got to sing and it nearly didn't happen, as she was supposed to be over 18. We begged the presenter, Sally Meen, for a chance and she finally relented. Keedie belted out It's My Party, by Lesley Gore, and everyone's mouths dropped open. She won the contest hands-down and came second in the national event.

Now Keedie had her heart set on being a professional singer. We sold some plates we had been given as wedding gifts - the only things we had left - so she could have a monthly singing lesson. We also did a deal with the owner of the local pub, where Keedie sang for free in return for a second-hand microphone and mixing desk. The first time she sang, she blew the place away and every Sunday after that, it was packed. From then on, Keedie was booked to sing at holiday camps and in pubs and clubs. We scrimped and saved to buy decent equipment. To their credit, the other children - now joined by my youngest daughter, Natasha - never moaned about going without toys or clothes. They were as determined to see Keedie make it as we were.

We made a video of Keedie singing while she hung out of the side of a borrowed ice-cream van, and took the tape to a local man, Kim Turner, who used to manage Sting. Though ill with cancer, Kim was so impressed he forwarded the video to a management company. Sadly, Kim died four months later, but Keedie was invited to sing in London - and the past few months have been like a dream. She's got a record deal, sung a duet with Duncan from Blue, been on Top Of The Pops and released her first album, I Believe My Heart. Sometimes I have to pinch myself. I'm the proudest mum in the world and, despite all we've been through, I wouldn't change the past for a moment.'

KEEDIE,

'I always knew music would be my life, even from a very early age. I don't know why, but singing came so naturally to me. Living in a caravan or a rented house with barely any furniture might sound awful, but although we had nothing, I was never miserable. My brothers and sisters went without so much, wearing the same clothes for months on end, but they never gave me a hard time about it. All I remember was them saying, "Come on Keedie, sing for us!"

At school I was desperate to be in productions, and in lessons, I'd be at the back of the class, making up songs. I did have a monthly singing lesson with a lovely lady called Isabel Morrow, but to pay for that, my parents sacrificed a lot.

Isabel asked me to sing a classical song to help with my breathing. I was like, "No way. That's so uncool. Look at me, I'm a pop singer!" But she insisted and I sang it all the way through in a really high key. When I'd finished, I just knew I was destined to sing that sort of music. Isabel was so blown away she said she would give me a lesson every single day for free - and she was as good as her word.

I remember telling Mum and Dad I was going to sing a classical song at a club one night. Dad was shocked, because the audience was full of builders and lorry drivers, but halfway through, they all started clapping and cheering. It was amazing.

Shortly after that, Dad recorded my ice-cream van video and we took it to Kim Turner. He loved it so much, so I couldn't understand why he didn't want to manage me. I was devastated when I discovered how ill he was, but by the time he passed away, the video had ended up in the hands of Nathan and Gary at Hyperactive Management. They came to see me sing on a freezing cold night in Torquay at a bingo hall, and a week later I was belting out songs at the Park Lane Hotel. The reaction was brilliant, and Nathan and Gary immediately booked me to sing at the Groucho Club.

I was so nervous in front of the star-studded crowd - Atomic Kitten, Richard E Grant, Richard Branson... Afterwards, Andrew Lloyd Webber came up to me - he was crying because he was so moved. He said, "You must come to my office tomorrow and sing for me." I felt as though I was in a dream as I performed songs from Phantom Of The Opera and other shows. He said he wanted to work with me as soon as I got a record deal.

Later I signed a deal with EMI and, just as he'd promised, Andrew got in touch and asked if I'd sing a song from his new play, The Woman In White - a duet called I Believe My Heart, the same as my new album, with Duncan James from Blue. We went on Top Of The Pops and the song went to No 2. in the charts (No 1. in the North West charts!) It was something I'd wanted all my life.

I still can't believe all this has really happened. It's been my dream since I was three. Now, it's easy to say the sacrifices have been worth it. I took my family on holiday to Italy for three weeks which was great, but I still love to go home and cuddle up to Mum. No matter what happens, even if I lose all this tomorrow, I still have the love of my family, and that's the most important thing. I can't thank them enough for what they've done for me.'

November 2004

The Following story is reproduced by kind permission of the EMI Group plc.

JUST OCCASIONALLY, APPEARANCES CAN BE DECEPTIVE...

So there's this young woman who goes by the name of Keedie, and she's a 22 year-old singer from Wolverhampton via Torquay. She looks, speaks and dresses like your average 22 year-old, and likes her dance music and her fashion. She is sweet, attractive, possesses boundless energy and a very pronounced craving to sing. So far, so X Factor. But Keedie, all five foot one of her, in fact has a rare talent indeed. It's in the voice, all in the voice, a truly bewitching and magical thing that, really, has to be heard to be believed.

Listen to her sing, and suddenly the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Her voice is clear and full, impassioned and magisterial, and as adept at interpreting a pop song as it is the most opulent of arias. She can take virtually any classical favourite - let's say La Wally or O Mio Babbino - and she'll somehow imbue it with something completely new and vital. Listening to Keedie sing them is like hearing them for the very first time. And so, in this case, appearances are deceptive in the extreme. Keedie, as you will very soon learn, is something rather special.

She was born in 1982, and christened Keedie because Dad is a big fan of Kiki Dee, and inexplicably felt moved to honour the singer in this fashion. (Clearly, he has a fondness for unlikely names: his poor son is saddled with Milan, in deference to the Italian city's two football teams.) By the time she turned toddler, the family had moved to Torquay, where her father had intermittent work as a painter and decorator, paying for his prodigious daughter's vocal lessons while narrowly avoiding bankruptcy. Until, that is, one Christmas when bankruptcy finally caught up with him, and the entire clan - Mum, Dad, three sisters and little Milan - found themselves temporarily homeless.

But a chronic lack of funds was never going to stop his dogged daughter from pursuing her dream. By the age of 11, she was performing outside local pubs, in hotel foyers and, once, on top of an ice cream van. Everywhere she played, she received a rapturous response that encouraged her to strive further still. She started taking time off school, ordering her father to drive her up and down the country to hastily-arranged performances at any club and pub that would have them. "It didn't matter where I sang," she says now, "I just needed to do it. I guess I was a show off, but then I felt I had a lot to show off."

Brimming with self-confidence, she left school at 14 in order to pursue her intended career full-time. Her live revue at this time consisted primarily of pop songs, until one day her mother asked her to give classical a go. She took singing lessons, which worked immediate wonders. "It was amazing," she says. "I discovered so many more colours in my voice. I learned how to phrase a line of music and let it flow naturally, and how to breathe properly. I felt like I was singing with my whole body, from my toes to the tips of my fingers to the back of my neck."

Then, at a special night at London's Groucho Club, a wide-eyed Keedie was gawping before her very first celebrity audience - among them, Bob Geldof, Richard Branson, Richard E. Grant and, because of a lax door policy that night, Atomic Kitten. After her performance, a member of the audience, wiping tears from his eyes, approached her with a proposition to sing the theme tune to a new play he was writing for the West End. Was she interested?

That audience member was Andrew Lloyd Webber, and a year later she found herself duetting with Blue's Duncan James on I Believe My Heart, the theme tune from The Woman In White. In its first week of release, it went to number two in the charts.

At last, Keedie's career was taking off. In between Lloyd Webber's offer and its eventual recording, she had secured new management and a new record deal, and had unleashed her voice upon classical and pop audiences at events across the UK, Spain and even Bulgaria. A buzz was beginning to generate about this little girl in the luminous yellow combat trousers with the phenomenal voice. Not for nothing did one wag recently christen her "Chavarotti".

"It's been amazing ," she says. "Everywhere I've played, I've first been greeted by shock - probably because the way I dress, I suppose - but then with a standing ovation. And you know what? I reckon I earned them!"

Keedie now has a smash hit single under her belt and her first album, 'Keedie - I Believe My Heart' will be the perfect vehicle to introduce her voice to a wide audience, here she breathes revitalised life into a selection of classical standards like O Mio Babbino and Vissi d’arte alongside songs by Madonna, Enya and Celine Dion, her intention to prove her worth and show her breadth.

"I don't like the idea of compromise," she says, sounding adult, looking teenage. "I don't care what kind of song I sing, or what kind of audience I'm playing to, I just want to do it, to get up there and sing my heart out. My ambition is to be number one in the pop charts and the classical charts, ideally at the same time. It’s been my dream since I was three years old. Now that it’s happening, you won't be able to shut me up. I've arrived, I'm staying."

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