ON Wednesday Cerys Matthews will play her first North Yorkshire show since she rolled up at The Band Room, Low Mill, Farndale, in September 2006 in a 12-seater tour bus bigger than the moorland wooden hall.

Once the wild woman of Catatonia and later the untamed jungle queen of I'm A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here, the Welsh singer and songwriter will be playing only 2 Nights Live In The North this autumn, one of them in the plush velvet of the Grand Opera House, York.

It will be interesting to see who turns up, given the unforgettable presence of her Sapphic following at Low Mill. “Nobody forgets that gig!” says Cerys. “In fact I was talking to Howe Gelb [the cult American musician] on Sunday about what a special place The Band Room is.”

Is she surprised by her pulling power among lesbians? “I’m a strong woman, so I’ve always had a strong Sapphic support…they have very good taste,” she says.

For those who know only the late-Nineties hits and rehab days of Catatonia, the Baby It’s Cold Outside Christmas duet with Tom Jones and the I’m A Celebrity fling with EastEnders’ Mark Bannerman in 2007, Cerys Matthews is full of surprises, and not only in her solo recordings that vary from the Nashville country of 2003’s Cockahoop to the reawakened Welsh songs of this summer’s TIR (Land).

Released on her own label, Rainbow City Records, TIR is a labour of love, the songs being accompanied by a booklet of photos from her family archive from the 1880s to 1940s of people at work and play.

Last year, she wrote and presented a BBC documentary on Celtic poetry, presented a further documentary on Dorothy Squires and was the first non-Irish woman to be invited to give a lecture on WB Yeats at the National Theatre in Dublin Now 41, and a mother of three after the birth of her son last September, she hosts and produces a Sunday morning show on BBC 6Music, as well as making documentaries for BBC Radio 2 and 4; and this year she will present the Best New Unpublished Writer award at the Dylan Thomas Awards.

Next January, her first book for children will be published by Gomar, and early next year too, she will present a Radio 4 documentary chronicling the background of Pippi Longstocking and a television documentary exploring the history of Cuba.

“I had the idea for the Cuban documentary as it’s a fascinating place, and I’d left home at 18 to go to Spain for a year and learnt the language, which I love,” she says.

“I speak Catalan as well…and French as well, so my life’s a lot more interesting than just coming back to Wales from Nashville, getting divorced, and appearing on I’m A Celebrity, but people seem to want to know more about women’s lives than men’s lives in the music business for some reason.”

Does she regret I’m A Celebrity and that News Of The World splash, pictured in transparent black underwear? “No, that was what I decided to do then, but it doesn’t define my life now,” says Cerys. “My life is a full life.”

Take the upcoming children’s book for four to seven year olds, for example. “I’m very, very interested in history and Wales is one of those countries that has fantastic stories that have been passed down over hundreds of years,” says Cerys, whose book contains two Welsh myths, one read from the front, the other from the back the other way up, both in the English language.

“I’ve put them into my own words from stories told to me as a child, both based in Wales – but Wales wasn’t ‘Wales’ then, was it! It was all Celtic lands,” she says, although she declines to reveal the book title just yet.

She found the writing experience very different from song-writing but refreshing too. “I had the illustrations already and then you start writing the stories and thinking about how a young child would follow them without losing interest, when you know a child’s mind is wondering,” she says.

“That can be like writing a song, but a song is written from a personal point of view – whereas these stories were already established.”

Cerys is a constantly creative force, with a second Welsh album DWR (Water) planned for 2011. “I like writing all the time; I like playing guitar all the time, and the only thing that stops me doing that is pretty much producing my own radio show on 6 Music,” she says. “I choose the guests, the features, the songs; I have total responsibility for my show.

“I started in 2008 and they gave me complete freedom, and obviously once you’ve given an animal freedom it’s hard to tame it down again.”

Her listening figures are growing, further testimony to Cerys being much more than first met the eye when the Cardiff girl sang Mulder And Scully, The Ballad Of Tom Jones and Road Rage in 1998.

“It’s been quite difficult being female and blonde and enjoying all sides of life. I’ve always been a tearaway girl but I also have an intellectual side too,” she says.

On Wednesday, the focus falls upon her music when Cerys and her two accompanying musicians play a predominantly acoustic set that will take in both Catatonia and solo selections, although she was yet to decide on the set list at the time of Monday’s interview. “Well, it’s all Cerys material, whether it’s Catatonia or they’re my songs; I gave the Catatonia songs a little break, but I feel the odd one makes sense to sing now. I’m fond of those times, and I like to change the set,” she says.

“It’ll just be whatever songs I feel like singing on the night. That’s always been the case throughout my career, whatever a song means to me in that season or at that time of my life,” she says.

“I haven’t ever changed what I like in a song. I always look for the guts of a song; I’m not really into style, I’m more of a content girl.”

Cerys Matthews, 2 Nights Live In The North, Grand Opera House, York, on Wednesday at 7.30pm (and Whitley Bay Playhouse the night before). Box office: 0844 847 2322 or grandoperahouseyork.org.uk