Georgian doll

And events this summer, when Russian tanks rolled into Georgia in support of separatist groups from South Ossetia, were a harsh reminder of just that. Most of Melua's family --her grandparents, uncles, aunts - still live in Georgia, either in the capital Tbilisi or the resort of Batumi, where she spent her early childhood. How angry was she?

'Extremely. It was f***ing weird and horrible,' she says. 'I was staying in this nice hotel and having a really nice life on tour and suddenly I turned on the news and there's my country being invaded.' Though she left the country at the age of eight - her family essentially became refugees - she still thinks of herself as Georgian. 'In situations like that I do tend to be rational, I wasn't screaming with fear - that's not going to solve anything - but I spent a lot of time trying to reach my family and friends on the phone. The Russians got to Gori, which is a good few hours from Tbilisi, and we were always aware that had they entered Tbilisi the rest of the world would have had to do something real about it. Thank God, no one I know was hurt or killed. 'Now what do I think about it? I think it's horrible that a lot of people haven't got homes because they were destroyed, and in Georgia there's no such thing as house insurance. Until about four years ago, no one could borrow any money from the banks at all in Georgia. There's still a lot of suffering going on because of what happened.'

Nowadays Melua lives in Notting Hill - she is worth an estimated £18 million - and talks with the earnestness of a student. Her accent is wellbroughtup middle-class. She wears skinny black jeans, and a schoolgirlish combination of spotted blouse and tank top; her cowboy boots are scuffed and her ringlets so jet black they're almost blue. Despite the softness of her face, Melua can't help looking slightly punky. Rock chick, she says, is her off-duty look.

Musically, she's the antithesis of the tawdryyethip Amy Winehouse tendency (though she hates the thought that she's a good example for anyone: 'I detest all that stuff about being a good role model. I'm a young kid myself, my responsibility is... nothing. It's to myself to just live.') The single that made her name, 2003's 'The Closest Thing to Crazy', was written by 59-year-old Mike Batt (the man behind The Wombles) and pushed not by Radio 1 or Xfm, but by Terry Wogan, to a middle-aged audience at breakfast time.

It was music, of all kinds, that filled the entertainment gap in Georgia. Her mother would play the piano while her uncle filled the apartment with heavy metal and rock. 'Despite all the hardships - maybe because of them - people would still turn to the arts. Every single family had someone who sang or played an instrument or danced.'

Eventually her father decided he had to get his family out, and applied for a job as a surgeon at Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital. Northern Ireland wasn't exactly paradise then, but it was better than Batumi. 'My impression of the West came from films, so I was expecting great Hollywood boulevards where I'd see Eddie Murphy and Whoopi Goldberg,' she laughs.

'Of course my parents knew where we were going, and what it was like. I think my dad did some research and, without wanting to make the Troubles sound insignificant, he said in one year over there they'd had maybe 50 people die, but in Georgia, even with no war, there were hundreds of people dying every year essentially of poverty. To me, it didn't feel like Belfast was a city in a war zone because it had shops that were open, and schools that were colourful and modern, and bombs weren't going off all the time and you didn't have to hide anywhere or run anywhere or queue for bread. Subconsciously it was tense, of course. But it was a state of mind rather than a tangible thing.'

Melua says that the experience of starting afresh in a new country gave her a fierce sense of independence. She calls herself a feminist. Every summer - wars and invasions permitting --she and her family return to Georgia for a holiday, and each time she is reminded of the old-fashioned attitudes she's left behind. 'A lot of my male friends from Georgia still want a nice woman who'll cook and clean for them and not work. I find it bizarre that a lot of girls here in the UK have no sense of feminism. They don't even think about it. To me, it's ultimately about having independence, which is enormously important.' Her mother Tamari is a strong character, but in Georgia conformed to expectation and 'was always the wonderful housewife who did everything for her husband'. Here she has blossomed, says Melua. 'It's been wonderful to watch her become her own really independent woman. It's one of the greatest benefits of coming here.'