WHEN one third of Fascinating Aida, Adele Anderson, announced that she fancied a break to take a holiday to North Korea, the group decided to put their feet up for three months. The break has, however, been extended following Adele's diagnosis with cancer and a hospital stay replacing a trip to the most secretive nation on earth.

With no choice but to cancel the tour, Dillie Keane has stepped into the breach and taken to the road with her solo show, and will be visiting both Hereford and Malvern this month.

When Dillie first gave voice to her ambition to be an actress, her parents wouldn't contemplate her doing it, she reports. Instead she went to university to study music and emerged with no degree and her desire to act still just as fierce. "But I became a secretary because I didn't know what else to do," she recalls. "I was secretary to the MD of an advertising agency and I soon knew that I would either kill myself or turn to drink if I stayed, so I auditioned for drama school, LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts) and got in."

Getting in, however, only took her so far. "My parents wouldn't pay, so I had to raise the funds myself. I wrote and wrote and wrote letters (I sent them out from the ad agency, using their postage - dishonest little tyke) and eventually I got an interview with a man called Jim Slater, a financier who supported a lot of chess players, and I was the first person he supported to go to drama school - he agreed to pay the fees provided I could get funding for living expenses."

As it turned out, Dillie's parents were 'rabid capitalist Tories' to whom Slater was a god, "and they couldn't believe that anyone like that would have faith in someone as flaky as they thought I was".

Having persuaded her parents to help fund her through drama school, Dillie did the rest by working in bars, running a stall in Portobello Market and as an artists' model. "I'd have been a prostitute too, " she adds, "if I'd known how to get started!"

Graduating at the age of 26, she found that she'd missed most of the young parts, and though she played Maggie in an acclaimed production of Dancing in Lughnasa, the promised transfer to London never happened.

I went off to Ireland and did a long run in a musical and had a wonderful time doing that, and then thought 'I can't just sit around and wait for work to come along'.

"I can just about hold my own as a piano player in bars and I'd been doing that six nights a week and was bored witless - playing to people who didn't really want to listen to me.

"I'd been fooling around with girlfriends doing some singing and I asked a little place up the road if I could bring a couple of them along - he couldn't pay them, but did offer free wine as an inducement! We had great fun and within three weeks Friday nights at that place were a highlight of the week."

And so the seeds of Fascinating Aida were sown - today, 33 years after the launch of the group, one song, Cheap Flights, has scored more than 10million views on YouTube, bringing them to a new audience.

But, says Dillie, the solo show "is a very different show - it doesn't have the ribald smut, and the satire is satire of the heart. It's a very personal show. Songs with autobiographical moments about how they came about."

After two months touring the UK with the show, Dillie will be taking it to New York as part of a Brits off Broadway season at 59E59. "It's a much easier show to transport," she observes. "The Fascinating Aida songs don't travel to the US - they don't like vulgar."

With Adele's health on the up, Dillie is hoping that the Aidas will be back on the road next year. "We are the happiest threesome," she says. "Adele is such a mensch, she's such a pal."

Dillie Keane will be at Malvern Theatres on Saturday, February 19 and at The Courtyard on Tuesday, February 23. To book for Malvern, call 01684 892277 or visit malvern-theatres.co.uk. For The Courtyard, call 01432 340555 or visit courtyard.org.uk