Like Kylie’s Eighties incarnation (before her music became cool and her buttocks became the centre of the universe), Dido comes with an unassuming, sweet-natured girl-next-door quality that middle-class suburban types just can’t get enough of. This week she was officially recognised as 2003’s best-selling pop artist in Britain. In terms of sales, her nearest rival is Justin Timberlake (an infinitely more cool proposition who at least has the decency to date an A-list Hollywood actress). But next to Dido, even he is simply a wannabe, an ex-boyband cutsie and former boyfriend of Britney who has shifted a paltry 1 million copies of his solo album.Needless to say, this year Dido is expected to sweep the Brits, the music awards ceremony that rewards sales over innovation. Add that to the 12 million copies sold of her debut album No Angel and that makes Dido among the most successful, not to say richest women in pop history. Next to her, Robbie Williams is small fry, Madonna a mere minnow in the piranha-infested pond that is pop music. In the three months since its release, Dido’s second album Life For Rent has sold 2.2 million albums and is nearing a jaw-dropping 8 million worldwide.
At the time I sneered; much as it pains me to admit it, she was right.Dido (full name: Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong) is now officially the biggest selling artist in Britain. In an industry where glamour and high visibility is essential, Dido is a curious anomaly. She is more comfortable in jeans and trainers than the latest Galliano frock. Her smiling face may appear on the front of her albums but even her fans would find it difficult to pick her out in a supermarket queue.
On the rare occasions that she speaks out in public it’s not to pick fights with her rivals (a la Christina) or slate her ex-lovers (a la Britney) but to back worthy causes. Last week, this graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama joined a chorus of classical musicians including Julian Lloyd Webber, James Galway and percussionist Evelyn Glennie in urging ministers to make music and songwriting a bigger part of the school curriculum. Rock’n'roll? Not exactly.
Four years ago, when the name Dido was still synonymous with Virgil’s Queen of Carthage and her north London namesake was flogging her wares around America’s toilet venues, an executive from Arista/BMG warned me that this unknown singer-songwriter would be “bigger than Madonna”. On the surface, Dido is everything you’d expect a 21st-century pop celebrity to be.
Like Britney, Madonna and Kylie, she’s blonde, she’s rich, she’s successful. Look a little further, though, and you have to wonder what all the fuss is about. The rises pushed average house prices in Wales, Yorkshire, Humberside and the North West above £100,000.. However, housing analysts have repeatedly failed to predict the strength of house prices over the past five years and both lenders have said prices might rise even higher.Home owners in Carlisle, Stafford and North Lincolnshire joined those sleeping most soundly in Boston and Lancaster, with their areas tipped as the country’s least vulnerable by the Nationwide.House price growth of 30.1 per cent in the North and 26.1 per cent in Wales during the final quarter of the year helped the variation in regional growth rates to hit its greatest levels since 1990.