Gabriella Cilmi: Meet the teen queen who is the sound of summer

Gabriella Cilmi’s ‘Sweet About Me’ is the sound of the summer. But where did this teen pop sensation spring from? And how on earth do you pronounce her surname? Interview by Nick Duerden

Gabriella Cilmi spent most of the day before our interview being photographed on the Thames by the Australian press, the Oz media keen for a glamorous snapshot of the girl from Down Under making a splash on the other side of the world. Given that this is the most unpredictable British summer since that of 2007, it wasn't quite the pleasure it perhaps should have been.
"In the space of a couple of hours we had practically every season of the year flung at us," she says afterwards, eyes as heavy as a panda's (she is still in full make-up) and looking, in this light at least, not unlike Desperate Housewives' Eva Longoria. "I was rained on, blinded by the sun, battered by the wind, and then it got really cold." She laughs incredulously. "I've never known anything like it."
But then it was a day of firsts for Cilmi (it's pronounced, incidentally, "chill-me"), as she was also aggressively papped, something that had never happened to her before. There were several

Gabriella Cilmi's VIP fling in tartan at Glastonbury

The 16-year-old matched trendsetter Kate Moss in the traditional Festival footwear department and went one better, thanks to her lucrative fashion deal with Italian style giant, Dolce & Gabbana.
Leaving the denim and dungarees to Moss et al, Cilmi dressed the part of the music world's most likely in a corsetted tartan creation straight from the D&G fashion house in Milan.
Despite keeping her cool among the all-star musical line-up, the Melbourne teen showed her age when gushing about the free goodies she's bagged since storming the charts.
"I got this tartan kind of dress and these corsety things, but they're not really corsets, they just have, like, a zip at the back," she gushed in a recent interview.
"It's really cool. And, like, these really awesome dresses, (are) just really nice. I get to keep them because I wear them to other events and stuff like that."
The Sweet About Me singer has won over the UK press with her girlish charm and solid vocals.
After appearing on London's morning chat show GMTV Cilmi endearingly said the studio performance - with minimal crowd participation - almost put her off her game.
"What's funny is when you finish and hear this solitary clapping from the sofa. For a split second, you think, 'only one person clapping? How bad was I'?"
Not bad at all back home either, given her debut single has remained in the top 10 (at No.6), fifteen weeks after its entry.
Meanwhile, it was Bob Geldof's youngest daughter Pixie who again
grabbed attention among the A-list crowd at the UK song-a-thon.
The wild child has kept London's tabloids on their toes with her daily hairstyles, arriving as a blonde, sporting a red wig on day two, then wrapping her head in a orange turban.