Trouble in paradise

She was having an idyllic break with her boyfriend 7,000 miles away from home.

So Charlotte Church made the most of the Hawaiian sunshine, canoodling in the pool with Steven Johnson and rubbing lotion into his back as they stretched out on the beach.

Then the phone rang . . . and all hell broke loose.

It was the 17-year-old singing sensation's mother Maria calling from Wales.

She wanted to know what her daughter was playing at being photographed arriving in the U.S. wearing an offensive T-shirt.

Other holidaymakers at the Fairmont Orchid Resort on Hawaii's Kohala Coast couldn't help overhearing as Charlotte tried to explain why she got off the plane in Los Angeles last week in a pink vest emblazoned with the words, 'Barbie is a Crack Whore'.

Close to tears, she said: 'I'm really sorry, Mum. I didn't mean to wear the top. I didn't think there would be any photographers at the airport.

'I had packed all my other clothes and just threw it on because it was comfortable for the flight.'

When her stepfather James came on the line, Charlotte shouted into her mobile: 'Calm down, Dad! It's only a T-shirt.

'I promise I'll never wear it again. I'll bury it in the sand right now.'

One guest who overheard the row at the weekend said yesterday: 'Charlotte wasn't trying to hide the fact that there was a problem.

'She was raising her voice at first then she began shouting. There were quite a lot of people lying close to her sunbed and they could hear everything.'

Johnson, 18, will take some comfort from the fact that the row wasn't about him for once. The wannabe rap DJ from a Cardiff council estate has been at the centre of most of Charlotte's disputes with her disapproving parents after they met on her 16th birthday.

The two teenagers have become inseparable and Charlotte recently moved out of the £750,000 family home in the city's Whitchurch district to live with Johnson.

Mrs Church is thought at one stage to have tried to ban her daughter from seeing Johnson altogether.

So the fact that he was allowed to accompany her on her trip west, where she is giving a series of private concerts, suggests the girl with the voice of an angel has finally won the battle of wills.

Charlotte is to host an edition of the BBC news quiz Have I Got News For You.