Knight's drawing in the soul music fans

Instead the brassy Midlands miss remains the UK’s best-loved homegrown soul singer with more hits than she’s often given credit for.

This year she followed a hits collection with fifth album Music City Soul, prompting her biggest solo tour yet – arriving at Sheffield City Hall a week today.

Part of Beverley’s charm – and maybe one of her downfalls in terms of being a global commodity – is her demeanour: what you see is what you get.

“I’m pretty much the same person on stage and off,” confirms the Wolverhampton wanderer, “without the makeup. And heels. I’m no celebrity, I’m a singer songwriter, from Wolverhampton. That’s it.”

Born Beverley Ann Smith, she took the showbiz name Knight in honour of her heroine, legendary soul singer Gladys Knight. This year she added MBE to that.

Among Beverley’s modern-day favourites are The Sugababes, whose “killer songs and harmonies” she has supported on tour before now as well as Take That, who she opened for and performed Relight My Fire with on their comeback tour. Then there’s those Prince shows and the Annie Lennox collaboration.

But next Saturday the focus is on her. “I have to write about the things I have lived through, that I have experienced,” she says of her songs. “That’s when the magic happens. If something happens to me that really moves me it ends up in a song. I have always wanted to sing. I was compelled to sing before I could even talk. I drove everyone mad.”

No doubt her folks agree it was worth the cotton wool in the ears as Bev continues her steady growth. Yet, as she released her Queen Of Starting Over live EP this week, the singer admitted she’s still coming to terms with being famous.

“I was in Covent Garden walking down the street on a shopping trip,” she recalls. “I heard a load of screaming behind me turned around and two Japanese tourists were running my direction. I wondered what was going on and I slowly realised they were screaming at me. I ran into the nearest shop and hid in the fitting rooms.”

Support next week comes from rising star David Jordan, who releases his debut single Place In My Heart this Monday with album Set The Mood out a week later.

The 21-year-old, born in Barnet to a mother from Montserrat and a father from Calcutta, also likes to mix rock with soul.

With a lead in a school production of Grease, some teenage years in a squat and a job in Starbucks already under his belt, legendary producer Trevor Horn found himself working with a very life-experienced young man armed with songs of forbidden love and other trials.