Katie melua on her tour and appearance at the o2

“I can’t wait to play The O2 Arena. I’ve heard lots of great stuff about it but I’m ashamed to say I haven’t seen anything there yet,” she said.

“I’ve been told that there isn’t a bad seat in the house, unlike Wembley Arena. That’s got a really bad layout – the performer looks like a little dot on the stage to people at the back. My music needs a good level of intimacy and I hope The O2 will be ideal for that.

“I love touring. You’re in a world of your own and build this little family around you, forming bonds on the road. But it’s not a holiday, it is hard work. There’s a common misconception that the music business is all glamour but I do feel lucky when I consider how my life could have turned out.”

Katie had a meteoric rise to the top when her debut single, The Closest Thing to Crazy, was picked up by Radio Two, propelling it into the Top 10 in 2003 when she was just 18.

Since then, nurtured by songwriter Mike Batt, she’s produced three best-selling albums and had a string of hits, her latest being a duet of Somewhere Over the Rainbow with the late Eva Cassidy, which reached number one just before Christmas.

Cassidy died in 1996 and Melua recorded her vocals over the original track, something she admitted made her quite nervous.

She said: “It was weird recording it. I had to be really careful not to screw it up because it was already a well-loved piece of music in itself. If I’d done a rubbish job it would have been embarrassing so it was important for me to respect the original as much as possible. To reach number one with it was unbelievable.”

In 2006 Katie made it into the Guinness Book of Records when she played a gig 303 metres under the sea at a North Sea gas rig.

Does she plan anything similar on this tour?

“I’ve had no more offers,” she said. “Maybe I could do one on the roof of Canary Wharf tower, or perhaps even a bungee jump off there. I’m an adrenalin junkie so that would be quite something.”

That fearless streak was nurtured as a child in her native Georgia. Katie only moved to Britain when she was eight and admitted she had some unusual experiences as a youngster.

She said: “My parents let me watch scary films when I was little. The censorship in Georgia isn’t the same as here so my favourite film when I was five or six was Aliens. I think watching things like that helped me learn how to control my fear.”

As for her plans when the tour finishes at the end of the year, she said: “I’m going travelling for a while. I’ve been recording for the last five years and having three albums under my belt at the age of 23 is enough for the moment. I want a bit of a break.”

Katie’s new single If the Lights Go Out is released on February 25. She plays The O2 on November 8. Tickets are available from www.theo2.co.uk.

simon.hayes@wharf.co.uk