SHE is one of Britain’s most popular jazz divas. And it was from Eastleigh’s Concorde Club that Clare Teal launched a star studded career which has made her the nation’s most successful jazz singer in decades.

The 38 year-old singer will be returning to the club, which she regards very much as her spiritual home, to headline an international jazz night on Wednesday.

As well as presenting twice weekly Radio 2 shows, her work takes her around Europe.

She enjoys living in the fast lane and would not have it any other way.

A Yorkshire lass, she fell in love with big band music when she dived into a trunk full of 78s, belonging to her grandmother and which were gathering cobwebs in the attic. In 2004 Sony signed her in a £3m five-album deal – an unprecedented amount for a jazz singer and she has never looked back. Her latest album, Hey Ho, was an extension of her celebration of the Great British Songbook, which has been a pet subject.

u THE Fo’c’sle Folk Club brings Bram Taylor to the Richmond Inn, Portswood, tonight. Lancashire-based Bram is an entertaining artist with a distinctive voice and relaxed stage presence. He calls on a large repertoire of traditional songs, together with contemporary and humorous material, performed on acoustic guitar, duet concertina or unaccompanied. Bram has his audiences singing, laughing from his infectious sense of humour, and occasionally shedding a tear or two.