She put it aside a couple of years ago to become a beauty therapist.

Debra, from Gleadless, who sings As Long As He Needs Me from Oliver!, spent years touring local clubs and entertaining the troops abroad with the all girl quartet Everywoman and duo 2Sonik with then partner Phil Docherty.

The City Hall will be very different from "the gig of her life" which was also the most embarrassing.

"Our contract meant that we had to socialise with the troops and a very handsome medic invited me to inspect the inside of his ambulance," she recalls.

"It was all very innocent - there was just one little kiss - when his sergeant knocked on the door and told him to come outside."

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The story was blown up to scandalous proportions at every gig until the last, performed in an aircraft hanger in Split with the doors open on to the sea.

"When I was on stage one of the side doors opened and a military ambulance came roaring in, sirens blazing! The place was in uproar," she remembers.

Debra has been promoted from the chorus by Keith who says "She is a true Nancy."

Showbusiness goes back at least four generations in Debra's family. Her mother Dorothy was one of the Verdelle Sisters in the Sixties, her grandmother was one of the original Tiller Girls in the early 1900s and great grandmother Rosena was one half of a duo with music hall legend Marie Lloyd's sister.

She loved performing for the Forces. "In the Falklands we had nothing to do all day so they took us ramping - sitting on the end of the ramp of a Chinook helicopter with our legs dangling over the edge while it was flying."

Debra was professional for 14 years and took it very seriously. So much so that it ruined her romantic life.

"I sacrificed my social life for singing. I wouldn't go out because I didn't want to shout over the music in clubs and harm my voice because I wouldn't be able to do my work.

"Then all of a sudden you wake up one morning and think 'I'm 30 and still single.'"

Debra, now 36, would be an entertaining date. As well as singing she's been a professional extra on Coronation Street, The Royal, Cold Feet, Brookside, Emmerdale countless times ("I've been a psychiatric patient, policewoman and in the Woolpack") and Heartbeat.

"When you go for lunch on location extras have to eat after the cast and crew.

"I was with a friend and waited until it was our turn but just as we were to go up and woman appeared with a dog (Claude Greengrass's lurcher) shouting 'Alfred's not been fed yet.' We even had to wait for the dog!"

These days Debra is a mobile beauty consultant and holistic therapist but for her the best therapy is singing.

"I don't ever want to give it up," she says.

Tickets still available on 0114 278 9789 (two performances).

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