Camille O'Sullivan: Blessed are the angels

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Camille O’ Sullivan, the Irish-French chanteuse and stand-out star of last year’s Festival, was reminded of this fact when about to make her TV debut on Later with Jools Holland last year.

“Before the show I was scared,” says O’Sullivan when we meet at a stylish hotel on Glasgow’s waterfront. “But then the boys in my band made me laugh. They pointed out that Tom Jones was singing the first song he’s ever written in his life on live TV, and that Snow Patrol had probably spent a few million pounds on their album, and their record company are going to have a breakdown if it didn’t do ok, so I should put things in perspective.”

She needn't have worried. O’Sullivan’s performance was superb, the work of a true perfectionist. Today she is enjoying a rare day off, but still looks like a film star from a more glamorous era; dressed in a vintage dress with a leopard skin jacket, her eyes sparkle as she talks excitedly about her show, and, of course, herself. O'Sullivan lays herself bare on stage – without her honesty and passion, the show wouldn’t work.

The Jools Holland appearance was the peak of a year that was hugely successful for the Cork-born performer. Her show, The Dark Angel, in which she thrillingly re-invents songs from the likes of Nick Cave, Tom Waits and Jacques Brel, was one of the outstanding success stories of last year’s festival, winning numerous five-star reviews. O’Sullivan has since completed her largest ever national tour and appeared on the cover of Time Out magazine, and is now set to return to Edinburgh to play a series of shows at Assembly Hall on the Mound. But despite this success, O'Sullivan remains modest about her achievements, and plays down any talk of being a star with her customary self-deprecating wit.

“I consider myself a walking disaster who is still hanging in there!” she laughs. “I do think something is happening though, people are beginning to cotton on.”

Her modesty perhaps stems from the amount of hard work she has had to put in to get this far. O’Sullivan is not a trained singer; instead she qualified as an architect, only becoming a professional singer later in life. Her sister told her she was mad to turn her back on such a steady career. But O’Sullivan was determined. She started singing in cafes and worked her way up. To this day, she still largely runs her own affairs. She updates her own website, she designs her own posters. She has no formal manager.

“I’ve had offers from people before,” she says. “But you have to be pretty tough. I’m pretty bad at that. My sister shouts at me down the phone, ‘you can’t accept this!’ and I say 'but I’m scared!’ My crazy little mind is all about the creativity. My obsession is to make the show really good.”

This is of course her real talent. O’Sullivan’s engaging performance style and the choice of songs she sings have won her much critical acclaim. Playful and sexy one moment, then achingly melancholy the next, the songs she performs during The Dark Angel are not what you might expect from a performer who is clearly enthralled by the nightclubs of Weimar Germany and the works of Brel and Brecht.

“I think it’s a mixture of a love of old German cabaret and a love of rock and all types of music,” she explains. “They very much form a link. I’m someone who loves life; I love humour and I love having a laugh. But the Nick Cave stuff, I could just swim in that forever given the chance. I think it’s the melancholy, I get a lot of comfort from it.”

O’Sullivan’s show has gradually evolved over time – she wasn’t always as playful on stage. “What’s happened over the years, my band said: ‘Camille, the rehearsals are a really good laugh; don’t deny that side of yourself on stage.' So I’ve been doing it.”

But despite the fun, it is important to understand that while O’ Sullivan might leave you chuckling one moment, she can easily break your heart the next. It’s all part of her well thought out plan to leave the audience eating out of her hands: “I like the rolling around on the ground and laughing at yourself. It also helps when you sing something quite emotional, it releases people. The audience can laugh at themselves too. I think people can get quite nervous at the show, the people who are shy; you can see they don’t know how to take me.”

“I think that’s why I maybe use very unusual songs at the beginning, like Brel’s ‘My Death’. In a way it’s like putting the audience at arms length, telling them ‘don’t make a decision on me yet.'”

She pauses and suddenly flashes me a grave look. “I’m game for a laugh but I’m very serious about what I do.” Just before I have a chance to respond, she erupts into laughter once more. It’s the two sides of O'Sullivan in a nutshell. Laughter and jokes one moment, melancholy and tears the next. Truly, a Dark Angel.