Michelle McManus: Reloaded

It's 12 years since Michelle McManus won the second series of ITV's Pop Idol, voted to glory by an adoring but fickle public. While she was quick to capitalise on this with a hit single and album, her career has followed a more interesting course since. She now occupies a strange place in Scotland's cultural landscape, where it's impossible to tell if her career's on the ascent or in a drawn out period of decline. Though the likes of Grant Stott and the Krankies appear alongside her in pantomime, where light entertainment figures go to die, it's McManus who gets invited to audiences with the Pope and offered a job presenting an astonishingly ill-advised rival to The One Show. Lately, she seems to be positioning herself as a gay icon, though this evening's audience mostly comprises silver haired couples.

What's allowed the star's profile to endure is her thoroughly Scottish mediocrity. Oh, she can command a stage and has a nice enough voice, but she lacks the iconic qualities of true cabaret greats. Instead, she's an every-woman who runs in marginally more glamorous circles than her fans, reporting back to them on D-list celebrity life as though a special correspondent.

Reloaded sees McManus bring us up to speed with her career to date, but it's hardly intended for the uninitiated. With no prior investment in her, these stories of lost kebabs and splitting skirts are likely to lack impact. Still, however clued up or otherwise audiences are, they're likely to appreciate the authentic Glaswegian voice being brought to the festival.