And the Hello and welcome to another edition of So Dijaker on songwriting. This is Brian here with Simon and

joining us today is an English Ivan Ovelo and Brit Award winning singer and

songwriter who first entered the public consciousness back in the late 90s

and went on to become one of the biggest selling British solo artists of the 21st century.

As this episode reaches you, she's just released her fifth album, still on my mind,

and is set to embark on her first tour in 15 years.

We are delighted to welcome the wonderful

Dido to the show. We sat down with Dido at a publicist's office in St. John's

Wood London on a lovely sunny day in mid-January and we had a very enjoyable chat.

She was charming company and had some really interesting things to say about songwriting

as you'll hear in just a couple of minutes.

Our guest was born and please let me get this right, Dido Florian Cloud, the Boonvial O'Malley Armstrong.

I wonder what that's where they'd scrabble.

She was born on Christmas Day 1971 in Kensington, London, and grew up in Kensington in a house full of books but with no TV or stereo.

Her mom Claire is a poet and her dad worked in the publishing industry.

Elder brother Roland, known as Rollo, later became a songwriter and record

producer and found a member of Faithless, not to mention his younger sister's main collaborator.

Dido set herself on a musical path by stealing a recorder from school when she was five

and later enrolled in weekend music classes at Guildhall.

By her teens she could play piano, recorder and violin and later learned the guitar

but didn't actually start singing seriously until her early 20s.

Her appearances with Faithless led her to finding management

...