The delectable Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins has just published her autobiography, Time To Say Hello.

Most of the publicity for it centres on a harrowing passage describing how she narrowly escaped being raped by an attacker when she was 19 and studying at the Royal Academy of Music.

While we understand the need for a “killer fact” to sell the book, the prurience of the press in concentrating on this particular aspect of the singer’s life is a pity because it certainly has more to recommend it than that.

The rest of the biography is considerably more interesting for admirers of her voice and technique. Here’s a little taster :

I had arrived in London at the age of 18, having won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music.

The Academy was everything I had hoped for - in fact, it was fab-lous (my favourite word, pronounced Welsh-lilt style, as two words). I became great friends with my classmates and we were all determined to make the most of what London had to offer. […]

Some months after leaving the Academy, when I was working as a music teacher, I got a call out of the blue to say that a demo tape I had made at college had found its way into the hands of Universal Classics.

After being interviewed and singing for the team there, I was offered a record deal.

Soon after signing the contract in March 2003, news of what was described as my “million-pound record deal” was everywhere. […]

My first album, Premiere, shot straight to the top of the classical charts.

Even now, having recorded five albums and been lucky enough to meet and work with so many of my musical heroes and performing all over the world, it still seems like a fairy tale.

Time To Say Hello by Katherine Jenkins is published by Orion on January 28 at £18.99 in the UK.

Katherine Jenkins, 25, the classically-trained Welsh mezzo-soprano with the dazzling voice, has become one of the UK’s top female singers. In the past 18 months she has sold more than 1.5 million light-classical albums.

She was the star of the VE Day commemorative celebrations in Trafalgar Square a year ago. Now she has conquered New York.

She says: “For a girl from small-town Neath, New York really is the Big Apple. No matter how many times I make the trip across the Atlantic, it never loses its magic. As the song says, ‘If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.’ I spent about six weeks there last year when I toured America.”

With her bell-like voice it’s not surprising she makes it anywhere.

Check out Katherine’s Living a Dream CD. In North America. In the UK.