"It's a boy!" exclaimed the midwife (incorrectly) as a screaming Valkyrie popped out into a bleak, depressed Manchester. Her mother, of cultured South American origins, deemed the chirpy Mancunian accent Valkyrie was developing on venturing to nursery school as a perfectly valid reason to move to Suffolk, where Valkyrie promptly took to the accent of a fishwife.

Valkyrie's musical talent first revealed itself at a similar time. Early recordings capture her singing along with old Granpa Federico as he played an electric sitar that he had designed and built himself.

She often thinks back nostalgically to carefree days, leaping through the Suffolk grasslands like a young gazelle. However, as with many a young bumpkin before her, she soon became disaffected with rural pastimes of straw dolly making, macramé, animal husbandry and slaughtering. She looked around for kindred spirits who felt the same way as she — a burning desire to lead a different way of life, to NOT go to Ritzies in Great Yarmouth on a Friday night and be a total Spam. But what was the alternative?

The answer lay in Smash Hits magazine all along. She promptly applied thick mascara and formed her first band. The Resurrection was the reassuringly dark name that was penned onto at least four school bags, and they never let the lack of instruments get in the way of their dreams.

This was to change when Valkyrie wandered past Cooks guitars in Norwich and experienced love for the first time in the form of a cherry red semi-acoustic guitar. That day, she resolved to save every penny to claim her pride and joy. She was slightly perturbed after she bought it, when she realised that it didn't make much sound without an amplifier. Luckily her dad felt sorry for her and lent her the £25 for a second hand one (which he immediately regretted).

Several bad haircuts later, Valkyrie found herself in London, and was soon gigging her way around Europe's finest snowboard resorts. Next came the opportunity to throw herself out of aeroplanes to further the cause of Channel 5's extreme sports coverage. However, between surfing and skating, she was finding it hard to progress in her chosen craft of Rock God. The blues set in and she penned some of her most moving songs to date — but who to perform them with?

The answer came in a chance meeting — one that put her firmly back on the Rock Express. After turning up (uninvited) to a dinner party wielding a guitar, she made quite an impression on the collected guests, including one Ben B Stings. And so it began...