I was desperate to play piano but there weren’t many spaces, so I got stuck with the violin. At first, I hated it, but I still had to practise. For the first three years my playing sounded like a cat being skinned alive but, to the credit of my family, no one ever complained. I passed my grades and got quite good at it despite my brilliant but miserable tutor. Oh, she was awful! And clearly hated the job. I eventually became a soloist and was one of only five kids who played in the chamber group at the front of the orchestra. After six years I was pretty good, and had fallen completely in love with the instrument, but it got to the point where I had to buy my own violin and give mine up to a first-year student. I just couldn’t afford it, so that was that.

It wasn’t until years later that it struck me what a wonderful training violin had given me. Having an instrument so close to my ear meant I had to hit the strings at the correct point, and that gave me an invaluable ear for tuning later on, and fuelled a love of orchestral music that has never left me.

Our first gig was in the Students’ Union – it my first time on stage and it was terrifying. As I looked out to the packed crowd, all there to check out the Student Union band, every part of me was shaking. Because I was so nervous at first, I forgot all the words to the songs and just made up the lyrics. For our Talking Heads cover, for instance, I just sang, ‘I’m blind, I’m blind’ over and over because it was the only part of the song I remembered. Once I got over my nerves, though, watching that big crowd of drunken students dancing and jumping up and down, I thought, I could get used to this. We did a few more gigs in the Union and I played with the jazz pianist one night in a local club in Middlesbrough. I got a taste for being onstage… and it was sweet.

You can hear the tremor in my voice – but it's also one of my proudest performances. It was mentally exhausting, but I got over it by channelling my feelings into my voice. Stepping up to the microphone still makes me nervous, but I’ve learnt how to put that demon on a leash. Nerves are not always a bad thing, and they never really go away, but you can lessen them by being as prepared as you can possibly be, and that means practice. I went home calmer. A few nights in my own bed fixed me and made me feel like my old self again. When I returned, I joked that I just needed the stinking, rotting city smell back under my nostrils. ‘Maybe I should draw a penis on my toilet door for comfort!

After my crisis, everyone became more supportive and realised I was vulnerable. I learnt how to cope better by expressing myself when I felt too much pressure instead of pretending I was invincible. For me, it was the beginning of the realisation that I don’t have to sound like Aretha or anyone else. I just have to sound like me.

It takes blood and guts to be this cool,’ I said to her, and then we cracked up laughing. I was being sarcastic but the line stuck in my head. It’s arrogant, a little camp, and later, when it became part of a song, I sang it with a smirk on my face, a sneering top lip and a bored visage. I wasn’t sure if anyone caught the irony, but I do remember that was when I stopped reading reviews, good or bad. I wasn’t strong enough. I hadn’t learnt how to process them. The good ones swelled your head, the bad ones stabbed you in the heart, and sometimes they were so personal and cutting they would take your breath away. It’s just not worth the agony. Funny, that in those days you could ignore reviews – now it’s near impossible not to know what everyone thinks about you. You can read a thousand wonderful things about yourself, but the comments you inhale into your very core are always the most negative.