MySpace a place for friends

Music became embedded in her soul as she and her siblings, Joe and Emma, were carted around the folk festivals where mum and dad, Steve and Ann, would be playing in their ceilidh band or dad would be looking after sound systems

The three young Rusbys would use their voices to while away long car journeys. “Mum and dad would sing songs and us kids would sing along, making up harmonies before we even knew what the word meant. There’s just something lovely about voices singing together, even more so when it’s family, and I’m so chuffed that Joe is singing on this record. Siblings have the same vibrato so the sound they make together is almost inseparable.”

Kate has never been allowed to forget that she spoke in an early interview (with me!) of being proud to be a folk singer and to know that it was not a genre for everyone. “It's like a rare diamond,” she said when we spoke again years later. “I like it that people have to look that bit harder for it."

She hasn’t changed, but how does this fit in with her own writing? “I have always said my albums will be a mixture and for now, I still feel that way.

“My first love is traditional song, and there are so many left that I haven’t got through. When all my old ballad books and mum and dad’s brains have been emptied of them, then I might do a record of just my own songs. I have no plan, just drift along and decide on the way.”
Collaborations with other artists – Eddi Reader, Roddy Woomble and Martin Simpson to name a few - are typical of the way Kate’s career has digressed.

But Ronan Keating?

“Why not?” is the instinctive, utterly unapologetic response. “He’s such a lovely lovely fella! Clued up, hard working, polite, funny, (with a cute little bum!). What is there not to like.

“I was dubious at first ‘cos they said I would have to do the video and lots of telly, and not having made a video before I didn’t really want to start down that route at 33. That’s for the youngsters, eh, dancing about pretending to sing.

“But they talked me round and promised I didn’t have to dance! So I thought why not? It’ll be my only chance to have a look into that crazy world of pop music, and it was really good fun. And I got to be on Top Of The Pops!! Thought that was quite cool really, something to tell the grandchildren.

“As for the couple of criticisms I heard, I don’t care. I don’t take direction from people I haven’t even met. I even got to meet the Royals, my Nanan Connie would have liked that.”

Colin Randall, 2007