Ten days ago, Oasis had sold three million copies of What's The Story? in Britain, Pulp had sold one million copies of Different Class and Norma Waterson (a Britpop free zone) had sold a total of 5,000 copies of her eponymously titled debut album. Then we had the lights, camera, action of the Mercury Music Prize in London - and when the chairman of the judging panel announced that, after a fierce struggle, Pulp had only beaten Norma Waterson to the award by a single vote with Oasis nowhere in sight, the television cameras picked out the 54 year old grandmother and folk singer from Hull, looking wide eyed around her, wondering just what she had done to whip the Gallagher boys and give Jarvis a bloody good run for his money.
Share your experience with the column, Norma: "It was just [pause] unbelievable. I had watched the Mercury every year on television and never thought it would be me sitting there. It was even stranger because three nights after the big, glitry ceremony, I was back playing in a folk club in Milton Keynes, ha ha.".
What did you say to Jarvis? "I told him I was very pleased for him. My daughter bought me the Pulp album when it first came out and I think it's great. The right person won the award and he did the right thing with the prize money £25,000 by donating it to the War Child charity. It was really nice because he was unavailable to take part in the War Child album when it was recorded and this was his way of contributing to a very good cause."
I saw you on News On Ten and everything; what has been the general reaction to your Mercury success? "Well, first there's the musical thing. The Mercury isn't judged on album sales, which is just as well in my case. It's decided by a panel of judges and I was just thrilled to find out that all these young Britpoppers at the ceremony loved my album. It's been a while coming..."
More than a while, Norma. Jarvis and the Gallaghers were barely born when she first came to attention as part of The Watersons (her family group) who were the leading lights of the English folk revival in the early Sixties. Back then, performers like Bert Lloyd, Anne Briggs and Fairport Convention were getting a Greenwich Village coffee house vibe going in London, particularly in the legendary Singer's Club, a venue run by Ewan McColl (for younger readers, he was Kirsty's dad) and Peggy Seeger. Another revival? "No, I don't think so," she says. "It's more to do with the fact that the folk idiom has already infiltrated a lot of modern music, I hear it in the increasing use of melodions, fiddles and pipes on modern records."
Norma's damn fine album is all cover versions, featuring songs by (among others) Elvis Costello, Billy Bragg, Richard Thompson, Jerry Garcia and Ben Harper. How did you decide which of their songs to do? "Once I had selected the writers I had admired, I just narrowed the songs down. It's funny but when I was first asked to do the album, I thought the record company wanted only traditional folk songwriters - but they didn't, so I had free reign. I made a conscious decision not to select the most folky songs these writers had done and also not to sing it their way, but mine.
"One of the songs on the album, Ain't No Sweetman, I first heard when I was seven because my father used to sing it - and, yes, I suppose there is a bit of an Irish influence in there because my great grandmother, Lizzie Quinn, came over to England during the potato famine and I've strong Irish connections. I'm always going back."
This remarkable woman comes back again next month, when she plays the singing festival in Derrygonelly, Co Fermanagh, on October 12th-14th and if you can't find her album in the shops, it's because it's been sold out since the Mercury. But don't worry, they're pressing up more. Just buy it.
