Reproduced from Belfast Newsletter 3 April, 1999

The blonde, striking, no-nonsense northerner was actually cleaning lavatories and changing beds when she got her chance for a stab at stardom.

"I left school and started doing a two-year course in health and social care but I gave it up after 12 months because it really wasn't for me," explains 19-year-old Ellie in her broad Yorkshire dialect.

She secured a place on a performing arts course and took a year out to take up two cleaning jobs so she could pay her way through college.

Then her sister sent her photo off to a competition to find Tony Blair's `babes' in the run-up to the general election. She was chosen and went off to sign up with a modelling agency - but they told her she was too short for catwalk work.

"I went along to a casting which turned out to be for a glamour shoot. I've got nothing against it but I wouldn't do it myself - I'd hate to embarrass my mum and dad. I wouldn't want to put them through that.

"So I said: `No thanks, I'm happy being a cleaner'. The photographer said: `Is there anything else you can do?' and my mum was with me so she said: `She can sing'."

And there it began for the Huddersfield teenager.

She says: "Up to then I'd only sung at christenings, weddings and at school. The photographer knew a pop manager who had put an advert in The Stage for a female singer. He'd seen around 200 girls and couldn't find one suitable.

"He asked me to send him a demo tape but I said I would sing down the phone and I said: `If you like me you do, if you don't you don't'.

"I thought, now's my chance, I'll go for it. He liked what he heard and came to see me at home the following week. He said: `Pack your job in now - I'm going to make you a singer'."

Her demo tape was played to pop supremo Pete Waterman, who wanted to hear her in person.

Ellie recalls: "He wanted to know that I could really sing as there are a lot of fakes with demo tapes. So I went in; I sang three lines and he took the headphones off me and said: `Right, you've got a deal'.

"He signed me purely on my voice - he hadn't seen me perform or anything. I always knew I had the confidence to sing but it's a different story singing in the bath to actually performing for somebody like that."

Although the leap from bathroom to the recording studio might seem daunting to some, Ellie was not phased by being put under such pressure.

"I don't feel nervous. I've always sung all my life," she says in her matter of fact manner. "Really this is just furthering that on, even if it is on a million times bigger scale.

"It was the fastest deal in the history of the record company. I signed nine days after meeting Pete. Then I did all my recording and here I am now."

Ellie's debut single Sweet Lies has just missed out on a Top 40 placing, coming into the charts at number 42.

But she has still attracted a good deal of attention in the run up to its release. BBC1's Electric Circus has been following her progress and she has received a fair amount of radio airplay.

Having recently put up with a wave of stage school escapees who are completely certain of being a success, Ellie's approach makes a refreshing change.

Whatever her long term prospects, she is determined to keep her feet firmly of the ground.

"I feel very honoured by what is happening, but I'm just going to take it one day at a time. I'm treating it like a roller coaster and if it's the time to get off, I'll get off.

"I'm just looking on it as a job. I still can't believe it's all happening to me as I have dreamed about it for so long.

"My family have been so supportive of me. Every time I've been on the telly they have recorded the show. I'm surprised the video hasn't broke!

"They are just so pleased. Out of all of this that's the nicest thing for me, seeing how happy they are. At the end of the day my mum and dad have worked so hard for me, my brothers and sisters. I just want to give them something back."