At just 20 Kate Nash has found herself the flavour of the moment. Almost three million hits on her MySpace page, a No 1 debut album, Made of Bricks, and now a sold-out tour, with even bigger shows to come in the new year. It is surely all too good to be true.

Arriving back in her home town – or as close to Harrow as she is going to be found performing these days – she sat behind a keyboard at the front of a stage that was designed like a scene from Yellow Submarine. Surrounded by a riot of fake flowers, plastic trees and a backdrop of drifting clouds, she ploughed into Mariella, a song about a girl who glued her lips together so that she never had to speak. The tune had a quaint vaudevillian quality about it, and as it progressed from a gloomy, Gothic beginning to a hyperactive conclusion, Nash hammering away at the keys while squeaking and spitting out the words “never, ever, ever, ever...” ad nauseam, as if in the grip of a manic temper tantrum.

It was the start of a performance which, if you didn’t know it already, left little doubt that Nash had once had the training, and ambition, to be an actor. A product of the Brit School for performing arts and technology, she has since acquired a cocky, street-chav persona that has been endlessly compared to that of Lily Allen, for obvious reasons. At times, half-singing and half speaking in her pronounced estuary-yobette drawl, she sounded like a parody of Allen. “Darling don’t give me s***/ ’Cause I know that you’re full of it,” went the chorus to S*** Song. Charmed, I’m sure.

In place of Allen’s reggae rhythms and old dance beats, however, Nash imported something of the flamboyant, music hall whimsy that propelled Mika to instant success, especially on the fast, clanking piano part of Skeleton Song.

If it all seemed a little mannered and contrived from a distance, there was no doubt that her fans have bought into this seemingly ordinary yet eccentric character – for the time being – and there was a jolly party atmosphere in the hall as she headed for the home straight with her signature hit, Foundations.

Tour continues: Mandela Hall, Belfast, Friday 16 2007; Ambassador Theatre, Dublin, Sat; Union Chapel, London N1, Nov 26 2007

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