The television talent show winner Leona Lewis is poised to become the first British woman to top the US pop chart for more than 20 years.

Not since Kim Wilde, who scored a transatlantic hit with her version of You Keep Me Hangin’ On, has a British woman provided the song that all America is humming.

The rise of Lewis, a former receptionist in Hackney, East London, has changed all that, earning her membership of an exclusive club that Amy Winehouse and Dame Shirley Bassey have yet to join.

Industry sources say that Bleeding Love, Lewis’s first US single, has halted the charge of Madonna and bumped the R&B singer Usher off the top of the Billboard Hot 100, after a surge in download sales. An endorsement by Oprah Winfrey on nationwide television sent Lewis, 22, soaring to the top. The Hot 100 will be unveiled in New York today.

Topping the US charts is no guarantee of longevity, however. Wilde did not trouble the US compilers after her 1987 success and pursued a career in gardening. Her predecessor, Sheena Easton, was briefly reinvented by Prince as a sex symbol after her pomp in the early Eighties, but transferred her talents to stage musicals.

American radio and the MTV network have become hostile to British rock and pop, preferring “nu-metal”, rap and glamorous homegrown R&B stars such as Beyoncé.

Most of Lewis’s new download-buying American fans do not know that she shot to fame as the winner of ITV1’s X Factor in 2006, or even that she is British. Bleeding Love was the biggest-selling British single last year.

Simon Cowell, Lewis’s manager, took her to the US and negotiated a £5 million album contract with the music mogul Clive Davis, who signed Whitney Houston. She was sent to record with top US producers and a slick video designed for MTV was filmed for Bleeding Love.

Lewis soon began appearing in US entertainment “ones to watch” lists. Her breakthrough came this month with television appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Winfrey’s nationwide chatshow.

After earning a standing ovation with her Oprah performance, the host told Lewis: “You’re the real-deal girl. Talk about a star is born.” Download and mobile phone track sales soared.

A strong lineup of British female singers is now hoping to emulate Lewis. There is a buzz over the Welsh singer Duffy, and Adele and Kate Nash are also hoping to make inroads. Winehouse has sold 1.5 million copies of her Back To Black album in the US, but has not topped the singles chart despite her Grammy awards.

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