JUST don't ask Sheffield singer-songwriter Helen Boulding if she'd like a cup of coffee. She's spending the entire summer playing in 80 coffee bars across the country.
The Diary caught up with her on gig 19 (out of 80) as Caffe Nero's Artist of the Month, which is heavily promoting her new album, New Red Dress, at the chain's Millennium Square shop.
"They're calling this the Helen Boulding I Just want A Cup Of Tea Tour," she laughs, sitting down drinkless at a table.
"I'm restricting Matt (Matt Chandler, her guitarist accompanist and roadie, carrying the electronic keyboard she plays) to two coffees a day. Any more and he plays too fast!"
Helen, who is doing up to three gigs a day until she finishes in Godalming and Fareham at the end of August, got the gig after a man came up to her at a concert which she'd only agreed to do at the last minute.
He'd heard the album featured by Radio 2 and asked if she'd like to play in his coffee shop. "I thought, how sweet," she says.
What she didn't know then was that Pablo Ettinger owns 360 of them.
At St Paul's, earlier in the day she had played at Ecclesall Road, there are problems with the power points. Matt has to rush off and buy an extension cable.
She's playing on the first floor. "I always get excited when I'm playing upstairs. I don't have to compete with the coffee machine," she says.
Helen, who wrote the number one single Maybe for Fame Academy winner Alex Parks and a slew of other songs for artists from 911 to the Appletons, normally does a five set gig. As it's Sheffield, she's doing six.
"Originally they said 50 gigs but when I looked at the list they'd missed off Sheffield. Then I kept adding places until I got to 120 but they cut some of them off," she says.
She's also played Mansfield Town where her brother Michael is a star player.
Her parents still live in Broomhill but these days she's based in London. "Crouch End. It reminds me of Broomhill," she says.
The Caffe Nero tour is helping album sales, up to 30 a day and it's a chance to meet the fans.
Matt returns with the cable and she starts the show. There's no mike.
Only about 20 people listening as she launches into the first, Way To Go, her last single, but she loves the intimacy.
"At concerts people come to you. With this, I come to them," she had said earlier.
And she didn't have a coffee. Although if you want to get on her right side try tea, a soya chai latte.
- Albums and downloads on www.helenboulding.com
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