The English born singer who would ‘go down with this ship', has become quite the musical phenomenon in not only her own country but world wide whilst remaining refined and with no signs of the normal corruption that often accompanies stardom.

Dido O’Malley Armstrong was born on Christmas day, December 25^th 1971 to Claire and William, both of whom were involved in the arts. Her mother is a poet of French extraction and her father, who died in December 2006, was an Irish publisher and former managing director of Sedgwick and Jackson.

Dido, who was nick named after the mythical Carthaginian queen, attended Thornhill Primary school and City of London Girl’s and Westminster School during which time her parents enrolled her at the Guildhall School of Music in London. She immediately excelled at music and became an accomplished performer on the piano, recorder and violin by the time she was a teenager.

Furthering her education, Dido went on to the Birkbeck University of London to study law but decided nit to remain on the course and instead followed a career in music. She began learning the guitar and eventually displayed her talents on her 2004 Life For Rent tour.

Dido compiled a selection of her songs in 1995 which she titled, Odds and Ends many of which were later featured on her debut album, No Angel in 1999. No Angel brought her recognition from Arista records who signed her up in the USA and went on to featured many of her tracks from her original collection Odds and Ends.

Dido’s brother, Rollo Armstrong owned a record company Cheeky Records which he sold to BMG records in 1999.

When Dido signed up with her brother’s record company her album No Angel had a delayed release which gave Dido time to concentrate on promoting the album in the United States and to have a slot on the Canadian singer, Sarah McLachlan’s Lilith Faith tour.

Promoting her album before and after the tour gave her more time to make a name for herself with the listening public and by 1999 her track Here with Me, was used as the theme music for the UK television programme Roswell.

Previously to that, in 1998, the music producer for the film Sliding Doors, which starred Gwyneth Paltrow, John Hannah and Jeanne Tripplehorn, picked her track Thank You for the soundtrack.

It was rapper, Eminem, who helped introduce Dido to the US audience in 2000 when he sampled the first verse of Thank You in his UK number-one single Stan.

Dido has also co-written and provided vocals for tracks with her brother's band, Faithless, including One Step Too Far which was released in the UK as a limited edition single. Rollo, Dido's brother, co-writes and co-produces a lot of Dido's solo material, including many tracks on No Angel and Life for Rent. In 2006 she also brought out the song "Christmas Day", which reached number 148 in the UK charts.

Dido has provided guest vocals on tracks by other artists including "Feels like Fire" for Carlos Santana's 2002 album, Shaman, and a duet with Rufus Wainwright entitled "I Eat Dinner (When the Hunger's Gone)" for the Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason film soundtrack.

Annie Lennox has joined forces with Dido and 22 other female artists to raise awareness of the issue of mother-to-child transmission of HIV to unborn children in Africa. The single "Sing" was released on World Aids Day on 1 December 2007, in conjunction with Annie Lennox's appearance at the Nelson Mandela concert in South Africa.

Dido had a seven year relationship with entertainment lawyer Bob Page with whom she was engaged but the relationship broke up in 2002 after the release of he album No Angel.

Since then Dido has had a number of relationships including one with footballer Sol Campbell and Rodney Webber.

ABB