Until relatively recently, the road ahead of teenage Irish wannabes was strewn with broken dreams. All dedicated fame junkies could hope for was the obligatory Billie Barry training, a couple of appearances on the Late Late toy show, a spell in a panto, and should they be so lucky - lucky, lucky, lucky - a walk-on part in a West End musical.
But those were the BLW days: Before Louis Walsh. And if it wasn't for the Mayo starmaker, 17-year-old Samantha Mumba, from Dublin, could well be sweating it out in her school uniform studying for The Most Important Exam of Her Life.
But this week Mumba was nervously awaiting results of a different kind. And yesterday the latest Irish musical export-inwaiting was thrilled to learn her debut single Gotta Tell You had gone straight in at number one in the Irish charts - the pop equivalent of an A1. The song is expected to register in the top 10 when it is released in Britain later this month.
According to pop legend, Mumba met the music mogul in the VIP section of Lillie's Bordello nightclub in Dublin a year ago and left Walsh mightily impressed. But while he has almost single-handedly transformed the pop landscape here - think Boyzone and Westlife - Mumba has enough assets of her own to suggest that if it hadn't been he who plucked her from relative obscurity it would have been someone else. A marketing person's dream, she can sing, she can dance and she looks wonderful. Observers beating the drum for our first R&B star are betting she can go all the way.
Mumba herself is not making much of it, but the fact that she is a black Irishwoman is interesting, given the current social climate. Now separated, her parents have been receiving almost as much media coverage (her mother is from Raheny, her father from Zambia) as their talented offspring. At a time of mounting racial tension here, Mumba is set to become the latest in a short line of black Irish stars the Irish public take to their hearts.
Like Phil Lynott and Paul McGrath before her, Mumba should have no problems endearing herself to the Irish public. But given some people's negative attitudes towards black people, how will they handle a black celebrity with an Irish accent? Ah now, that's completely different.
Mumba claims never to have had any problems with racism as she grew up in her terraced house in Drumcondra, where she still lives with her mother and younger brother. She says reports of a racial attack in north Co Dublin last October were "totally fabricated".
"It's strange looking at the hassle over the immigrants now; I never had any hassle whatsoever," she told In Dublin magazine. "It's different for boys, I guess. When I was in school the girls loved my hair because it was different and the boys either fancied me or were scared of me. It's different for my little brother, though. He wouldn't be bullied, but he'd be called the odd name.
"I'm black and I'm from Ireland . . . it's kinda like, uh, oh. . . but it means I'm something different," she says, adding that she is not a smiley schoolgirl type like Britney Spears. "I want to show a bit more attitude and I have an opinion."
Mumba says she has wanted to be a pop star since the age of 10, but began classes in the Billie Barry School at three. Later, she performed in pantomime with Twink and in the acclaimed show Hot Mikado, based on Gilbert and Sullivan's operas. Since meeting Walsh her life has been a conveyor belt of video and photo shoots, interviews and public appearances. Her smiling face is plastered on posters all over Dublin and as they prepare for their Irish exam on Monday, her classmates can't be blamed for being just a teensy-weensy bit jealous.
WHILE her protestations that she is not a wholly manufactured pop product - Mumba co-writes her songs - may be received with cynical smiles, she is so far backing up this claim. The singer has already sacked three stylists, preferring to have greater control over her image, and resisted early pressure to change her name. If American pop princess Christina Aguilera could make it with her moniker, she reasoned, so could Ms Mumba.
Her divadom seems assured and she already talks about herself in the third person ("I have a lot of control over who Samantha Mumba is," she told one interviewer), describing her music as "R&B pop with a little bit of Mumba".
Her next single contains a sample from David Bowie's Ashes to Ashes and Bowie has shown interest in directing the video. With her record company reportedly going for a slow-burn-eventually-reaching-towering-inferno strategy there is no pressure on Mumba to emulate the record-breaking instant success of Westlife by reaching number one with her first five singles.
But stranger things have happened in the funny old world of pop. Mumba Number Five anyone?
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