I'm Every Woman
She's sold millions of albums, yet you might have sat next to Dido in the pub and never known.
How has she kept such a low profile?
Dorian Lynskey finds out
It's a hot, clammy July day in London and Dido Armstrong is sitting at her garden table recounting one of her favourite stories about fame.
I once went to a party in America and someone asked me, "What's your name"? And I said, "Dido". And he said, "Oh is that spelt like the singer"? And I thought, "Jesus, this is brilliant! Someone knows your name and your music and they haven't got a clue that it's you".
This sounds like one of those faux-humble anecdotes - let's call them Jenny-from-the-blockisms - favoured by the famous, but in this case you really could see it happening.
For a platinum-selling star, Dido radiates normality. Wearing two vests, jeans, sandals, hoop earrings, a gold wrist chain and no make-up, she looks like any quietly stylish 31-year-old.
The kitchen wall in her north-London house is covered in framed photographs. There's Dido with her friends, there's Dido with her brother and co-writer Rollo and, oh, there's Dido with Sting.
If you didn't know who Dido was you could mistake her for a well-dressed fan who'd collared the tantric one for a quick snap.
It's this everywoman quality that helped put her debut album in 12 million homes worldwide.
No Angel spent 100 weeks on the UK album charts and made her one of the only British singers about whom the USA gives a jot.
You can hold up No Angel as the epitome of all that is bland about music, but it's not Dido's fault so many record-buyers like her tender electronica-tinged love songs. And anyway, she points out, when she made No Angel she was an unknown singer-songwriter whose only claim to fame was that she'd sung with her brother's dance act, Faithless. It's hardly Pop Idol.
"That's the only thing that bemuses me", she says in her classless London accent. "How can you hear something differently just because it's sold millions of copies"?
But isn't she just a teeny bit fed up with hearing those songs by now?
"I still like them. I just don't want to listen to them day in, day out. Like anyone else in this country, ha ha".
Dido lived with No Angel for a long time. She began writing it in 1996, released it in the USA in 1999, had Thank You sampled by Eminem on his hit Stan in 2000, and launched it in Britain in 2001. When she finally stopped promoting it last year, she broke up with her fiance, entertainment lawyer Bob Page, after seven years.
She avoids going into details but the result was that she was a free agent in every sense.
So she started travelling alone, to New York, Thailand, Canada, Ireland, quite random really.
"You're really aware of your surroundings when you travel on your own. On tour there are so many people, you're just dying to get rid of them. Everyone wants to look after you - it's their job - but it can be stifling. I've always been a bit of a loner. When I was a kid I used to spend hours a day on my own. I'm quite happy like that".
She soon realised she could melt into the crowd and never be noticed. Surely she can't do that in London anymore, I suggest, but she insists she can.
"I'm trying to think if there's one thing that I cannot do and there isn't". She thinks about it. "Tube's fine. Bus is fine. Football, fine. Pubs, fine. HMV on a Saturday? Maybe not. For me the most important thing in the world is to have a life as that's the core of my songwriting. If you lock yourself away you ain't going to have anything to write about anyway. Then you start writing songs about how horrible it is being famous. Yeah, at which point shoot me. It would be awful".
Much is made of Dido's unusual London upbringing - no television! and florid full name - Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong - but there is nothing flaky about her. She�s level-headed and unfussy and direct. �The one crime in our house was to lie,� she says. She was thus as well-equipped as anyone for the seismic changes of the past couple of years. During 2001, she earned �12 million. �You can�t dwell on it too much,� she says, sighing. �It comes with complications, like anything that gives you freedom, but I wasn�t traumatised. It becomes about simplicity and whatever you need to do to have that, whether it�s giving it all away or doing certain things with it, then do it.�
Do your friends always expect you to get the round in at the pub?
�No. It�s really funny as I�m always trying to get the round in. I went on holiday with my close girl mates last summer and they ganged up on me and wouldn�t let me pay for anything.�
Has she developed any prima-donnaish bad habits? �We used to joke about what we could ask for. We�d do these fake riders to see if anyone noticed. They�d get really ridiculous.�
Did everyone guess it was a wind-up?
�Of course they did, because the last thing was always an elephant.�
Well that gives away the gag.
�Yeah, but otherwise you�d end up with a bowl of cherries with all the stones taken out and you�d feel terrible.�
In September Dido releases her second album, Life For Rent. Sonically it is not a million, or even a hundred, miles away from No Angel but while that album was full of swooning odes to her man, Life For Rent has a more treacherous landscape. Mary�s In India sketches a relationship collapsing, Don�t Leave Home is a study of addiction and Stoned berates a lover too numb to commit - �It�s basically saying, Let me in or fuck off. It�s a pretty normal girl song.�
It�s impossible to listen to Life For Rent without thinking of Dido�s break-up with Bob Page. �Riiight,� she says warily. So how directly did that influence the songs? �It�s a funny thing because on the last album people would listen to the songs and they�d relate them to their own lives. Now they�re listening to these songs and relating them to my life.�
She leans forward, suddenly apologetic. �I�m not answering your question. Sorry. What was the question again?�
ness last year so stuff will filter through but not in the songs you�d expect. People can guess but I don�t think they�ll find many answers.�
Are you and Bob still friends?
�Yeah, we are. It�s all good. Yeah... Ha ha.�
With that embarrassed laugh, Dido�s frankness runs into her desire for privacy and she�s silent. She protects those close to her and tells how one tabloid tried to get in to the hospital where her father (who has since recovered) was seriously ill last year.
�I don�t care what anyone says about me. It�s what I take on. But it�s not what people around me take on.�
When you�re famous you have to fight for normality, lest you become megalomaniac, miserable or mad. Dido is none of these things.
�One of the habits I slipped into was thinking I had two lives. Because I had a life and then it changed so drastically I would go from the whole pop star thing on one hand and the rest of my life on the other. Then I thought, You know what? This is your life. Get over it.�
And it looks like she has.