She's been on the road promoting her funky new single Two Faced and hasn't seen him for a couple of days. But everything's OK - she's just spoken to him on the phone and yes, he's remembered to book the restaurant for their anniversary dinner. 'Good job too!' she says with a laugh.

Louise Redknapp, aka Louise Nurding, aka just plain Louise, has every reason to be happy. Why? Because her footballing superstar hubbie has remembered their anniversary, her single Two Faced has put her back on the pop map and she's got an album up her sleeve that she's over the moon about.

'I'm so proud of it,' she says. 'It's a lot different to the first two albums. Lyrically it's much stronger and the music's edgier too.

'I've got opinions now and I've got things to say. For example there's a song called The Best Thing About Being A Woman. A lot of my friends have had children but they manage to keep everything together - they're brilliant housewives, they still look great, they work hard. This is an album that's true to my life. It's very personal.'

The title, Elbow Beach, is personal too. It's where she and Jamie tied the knot in Bermuda, although Louise resisted the temptation to do the cover photos there. 'That would have been a bit too corny,' she says with another laugh.

Louise laughs a lot. It's the sound of a woman who's survived teenage success and a reportedly nasty split with Eternal to become a confident and contented 26-year-old. She's not even disappointed by the fact that she's fallen from number two to number nine in FHM's world's-sexiest-women poll.

'Am I disappointed? No way. I'm absolutely delighted. I've been out of the public eye for ages so I didn't even expect to make the top 50.'

A couple of years ago Louise didn't have much competition from good looking, sexy female pop singers. Now she's up against Billie Piper and the new, improved Kylie Minogue. So how does she rate her rivals?

'Oh they're not rivals,' she says. 'Billie's great and Kylie's a veteran compared to me. She's been around for a long time, a lot longer than I have. She's someone I look up to rather than someone I see as a threat. Spinning Around was a great song and I'm really pleased to see her back doing fun pop stuff.'

— Simon Button 10.07.00