Travel back to February 2006 and no-one had heard of the then 18-year-old, who had designs on a stage career of a different sort.

Part of a steady stream of young female singers who attended the Brit School (the free performing arts school in London, whose alumni includes Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen and Katie Melua), just two and a half years ago, she was a wannabe actress, flogging clothes at River Island by day and frying chips by night.

"It sounds cheesy, but it was a real journey, discovering yourself, becoming comfortable," she recalls of her time at the Brit School. "I can remember the first time I ever did a play with my parents there. I was almost throwing up. But I was doing five main parts by the end of that year."

Acting was her first love then, and were it not for a failed acting audition, the pop career may never have come about.

"I was auditioning on the reserve list of the Bristol Old Vic theatre," explains Nash, who comes to the Corn Exchange on Monday as part of the Edge Festival. "I got a rejection letter and the same day I went to watch Brokeback Mountain feeling really depressed."

In the days after her rejection she fell down some stairs, breaking her foot. During her recovery she was unable to move and found solace in songwriting, something that she'd been doing on-and-off since she first became interested in music during her childhood. She began to write some new tunes, fine-tuned some old ones, and set about trying to get herself gigs to showcase these songs.

"It wasn't going very well," she admits. "so I started concentrating on music, because I had been wanting to do that for ages."

"I got a job in River Island and I was really rubbish, so as I got my first gig, I was like, f*** that I'm not working ever again," she adds.
The gig in question was at a bar called Trinity, in Harrow, and for her troubles the singer was paid the princely sum of £30.

No matter, she went down a storm, repeated the trick elsewhere around London, and then took advantage of a then new phenomenon known as MySpace to build on her fanbase.

"MySpace has been really important," she says. "I think it's the tool of our generation. I just put up four songs and it started with friends and family, and friends of friends."

Her catchy tunes and tongue-in-cheek lyrics about bad boyfriends and even worse girlfriends soon began to receive support from MySpace users, including the aforementioned Lily Allen, who name-dropped her in her popular online blog.

"Check out Kate Nash, she's well good, I promise", wrote Allen. Her army of adoring fans did just that and they liked what they heard.

To give an idea of the impact it had, back then Allen became friend No 8 on Nash's MySpace, while at the time of going to press, she has no fewer than 196,739 friends on the famous social networking site.

Hard to believe that was just 18 months ago. Since then, Nash has won a Brit Award for Best British Female Solo Artist, had a chart-topping debut album, enjoyed a string of hit singles in the UK, and snared a rock star boyfriend in the shape of Ryan Jarman of The Cribs.

The pair met on Later With Jools Holland last year and Jarman soon endeared himself to Nash's fans by lobbing a plastic pint tumbler at a sleazy heckler during one of her shows at the Barfly in Camden.

"We started hanging out when Ryan came to my birthday party in Harrow last summer," she says. "If you fancy someone, I think you should throw them in the deep end straight away. So I sent my mum to pick him up at the station."

Before hooking up with Jarman, the longest relationship she'd had was about five months. "In books, girls always have their first French kiss with a nice boy on holiday," laughs the singer, who insists she's never been the dreamy romantic sort. "When I was 16, all I got was men trying to buy me off my family with camels in Morocco. They're well tight with their camels there. One guy offered nine camels, and I was like, shut up, how about 29? What's my mum going to do with camels, anyway?"

Though this is the most exciting time of her young life, Nash admits she is finding it hard to deal with obsessive fans.

The Foundations singer is starting to realise that her celebrity status does have a downside and, despite using the internet to make herself accessible to fans, she was startled to discover personal family pictures on a MySpace fan site. She explains, "I was accepting a friend request from the Official Kate Nash Fan Club. When I clicked I found these really weird, personal pictures of me and my sister, going back months.

"I don't know how they got hold of them but somebody's really been keeping track of me and my family."

And if that's not enough, she also has her stalkers. "I have this girl who comes to all my shows," she says. "After one gig she came up and screamed 'I love you' then planted a kiss right on my lips.

"I could've done with some warning first," she deadpans.

Kate Nash, Corn Exchange, Newmarket Road, Monday, 7.30pm, £15, 0131-226 0000