CAMILLA KERSLAKE was born in Dulwich, South East London in 1988. Aged just one she and her family moved to New Zealand where her primary school education focussed on singing and games and sport. Camilla sang all the time, but so did everyone else. So did her mother and her grandmother who had been Shirley Bassey’s rival back in Wales.

Aged nearly nine the family moved back to England, settling in Lancashire. Camilla wanted to be a doctor, not a singer, but the school could see they had someone special in their ranks.

Two years later the family moved south to Kingston where they still live. Aged 12 Camilla began attending Hollyfield School in Surbiton. “I owe a lot of what I am to that school,” she says. “It was a mix of millionaire’s kids and kids from really tough estates, brilliantly multi-cultural.”

It was there, during a detention the whole class endured, that Camilla’s talent was really spotted. “I was mucking around with a friend on the piano and the music teacher Mr McVitie was listening,” Camilla says. “He heard me and called me outside. I was worried – I’d never been bad! – but he said I had this incredible talent. He discovered me and pushed me.”

He also got Camilla some free singing lessons and soon she was opening every concert and school show. Camilla didn’t want to be a doctor anymore. Her parents were thrilled. “It’s what they had wanted for me but they wanted me to figure it out for myself!” she laughs.

At 15 Camilla started to audition. She did everything she could to get known, get some experience. There were hundreds of open mic nights where she’d sing jazz and rock. Through it all she always wanted to be a classical singer. But it costs hundreds of thousands of pounds to become an opera singer. You have to study for eight years and to be good enough to get a scholarship you need hundreds of hours of lessons. “You can teach yourself to sing rock or pop,” Camilla says, “but you can’t teach yourself classical singing. I thought I would never do it.”

So Camilla went to study at the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford. “I got a Student Loan and I loved it,” she says. “I lived on baked beans and dry rice and pasta. I saved every penny I could and started paying for lessons.”

Camilla’s life as an artist really began with a demo she made in her bedroom. With £20 borrowed from her mother she bought CD backing tracks and recorded her versions of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Pie Jesu and Schubert’s Ave Maria. She pressed up some copies – no picture, just a phone number. This was the demo she took up to a studio in Ladbroke Grove every day for weeks just so she could place a copy in Gary Barlow’s hand.

“I could barely afford to travel,” she says. “But I had to do it. He only listened to it because I went every day. I suppose he listened to it so he could say, ‘Stop coming!’ But he liked it. I had no idea he was creating a label. I just wanted his advice as I was getting nowhere…”

They finally met on December 8 2008 – “the best day of my life!” laughs Camilla. Gary signed Camilla to his Future Records label and her debut album was nominated for Best Album at the 2010 Classical BRIT Awards. Since then Camilla has sung for The Queen at Derby Day in front of 140000 people, for Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace, at the Royal Albert Hall, at Wembley for rugby’s Carnegie Challenge Cup Final and she’s toured with The Priests in UK & Ireland.