Star quality: Katherine Jenkins

Few other twentysomethings are blessed with a voice so pure it can shatter a chandelier. Nor have they recorded five best-selling classical albums, dueted with the likes of Andrea Bocelli and Placido Domingo, performed at Live8 and the Millennium Stadium or collected a clutch of Classical Brit awards.

Still fewer have been bestowed with the kind of enviable curves that fill a succession of designer stage dresses to perfection.

Yet somehow, beneath the extraordinary talent, the wealth and the beauty you get the feeling Katherine really is just one of the girls.

“I have all the same friends as before,” says the former singing teacher who, in the space of a week, will be jetting off to LA, Brazil and Dubai.

“We go to the pub and the cinema and out shopping. I like going out for dinner and nice long walks. Just ordinary things.”

And while many see Katherine’s transformation from student to superstar as a plucked-from-obscurity fairytale, in truth, she was laying the foundations for her glittering musical career long before record label Universal snapped her up fresh from college.

At just four years old Katherine joined her local church choir in Neath and “fell in love” with classical music aged ten.

“I’ve always wanted to sing,”

she says. “I just never thought it would be on this scale. I thought I would graduate from music college and then gradually work my way up the opera chorus.”

Work hard, and success will follow was the mantra instilled in a young Katherine by her dad, who died when she was 15 and about to take her GCSEs. Her father would certainly be proud of his eldest daughter now. “Oh I hope so,” she says in her warm Welsh lilt.

Focused she may be, but the hard grafting singer doesn’t appear to have a diva-ish bone in her body.

She talks earnestly about her career, places huge important on keeping in touch with friends and loved ones and still has an endearing incredulity at her own success.

“I never thought I’d be doing these things,” she says with an infectious giggle. “It still makes me laugh.”

Katherine’s first four studio albums went straight to the top of the classical album charts, making her the fastest-selling mozzo-soprano of all time. She has outsold the likes of Girls Aloud and The Spice Girls, completed a sell-out tour with prima ballerina Darcey Bussell and is currently touring the UK with a stop-off in Bournemouth this month.

“I’m so excited because I haven’t been out on tour for three years,” she says.

“I’m going to be doing some stuff from the new album Sacred Arias and some of the most popular ones from the last five.”

And, she promises, there will be lots of frock changes.

“I have to say that I’ve always been very feminine and girly and I don’t see why classical music and opera can’t be sexy.

“I don’t think of myself as sexy – this is just my image.

But I don’t see why it can’t be incorporated.

When people come to see a classical show it should be an audio experience but why can’t it be fun visually too?”

Readers of GQ magazine – in which Katherine recently appeared wearing a low cut mini dress and suspenders – would surely agree.

“I’d been asked to do other kinds of lad’s mags in the past and I knew it would be in bikinis and that kind of thing.

I didn’t want to do that. I think GQ is a different kind of publication and Vogue was involved so I knew the photos would be beautiful. Also, I wanted to do something a bit different. I don’t always want to do what people expect. If I wasn’t a classical singer, if I was any other 28-year-old, people wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

“I hope I’m helping to change young people’s perceptions of classical musical. People are always so surprised when they ask me what kind of music I like and I say Timbaland or Madonna.”

Fans were certainly shocked when the squeaky clean singer recently admitted to trying cocaine and Ecstasy as a student.

Katherine – who tried the drugs a handful of times – says she regrets it but wanted to be honest about her past.

She’s gutsy too, as she proved yet again when she flew out to Iraq to entertain British troops. Katherine thought nothing of risking her own life in the process and took rather well to the harsh reality of life in a war zone.

“The first day I went out there was one of the best days of my life,” she says sincerely.

The invitation came after a performance with Dame Vera Lynn in Trafalgar Square to mark the 60th anniversary of VE day – a moment Katherine cites as one of the proudest of her career, says Katherine who seems remarkably unfazed by her own brush with death in the skies over Basra.

“We were fired at by a ground to air missile.

Suddenly the helicopter dropped out of the air to try and manoeuvre away from the missiles. It was so frightening at the time but it hasn’t put me off.

“I have so much admiration for them and for their families.

It makes me very proud. It’s a few days out of my life that I can go and see them. A visit from anyone is so appreciated and I feel it’s my duty to give a little bit back.”

Although happy to chat about most aspects of her life, the singer prefers to keep her love life private.

Enquiries about her yearlong relationship with former Blue Peter presenter Gethin Jones are met with another giggle and a coy “it’s fine.”

Could there be wedding bells on the cards?

“My parents were married for 25 years and our family is big and very close,” she says.

“I think that’s a good example and I would like that for myself.”

For now, Katherine is focusing on her career and hopes to crack the USA when she takes her music out there in February.

“I haven’t got any expectations,” she says. “I’m just going to go and work hard.”

Katherine Jenkins is at Bournemouth International Centre on December 13.

Tickets: 0844 576 3000 or bic.co.uk