TWO years ago, Bury girl Suzanne Shaw was a pop superstar with chart-topping band Hear'say, manufactured through ITV's Popstars show.

Their debut single, Pure and Simple, sold in record time and the band headlined the Brit Awards. The world was at their feet but, 15 months later, it was all over.

Reporter NEIL BRANDWOOD caught up with Suzanne at The Lowry, where she is appearing in the musical Summer holiday, to discuss life after Hear'say.

FOR someone whose career was said to be over, Suzanne Shaw is not doing too badly.

She is starring in Summer Holiday, which is receiving rave reviews as it tours the country and looks set for the West End. She lives with her fiance in a dream house in Surrey, has an album in the pipeline and is looking to buy a home in LA.

As she joins me for a cup of tea in the restaurant of The Lowry, I have to remind myself that she is still only 21. It seems a lifetime ago that she sang in an Abba tribute band, lived with her mum, Janet, in Orwell Close, Bury, and cameras captured the moment at her grandmother's home in Stand Lane, Radcliffe, when she was selected for Popstars.

"I wasn't prepared for the enormity of the success and I don't think it's fully sunk in even now," the former St Gabriel's RC High School pupil said of the Hear'say experience. "Because we were working so hard and putting in such long hours, we couldn't really appreciate it or enjoy it."

Towards the end of the life of Hear'say, when the media backlash was at its height, Suzanne became increasingly cynical and still finds it hard to trust anyone. She even turned to alcohol to cope with the pressures.

"I was going through a really hard time and drinking a lot of vodka. I'd moved to London and I didn't have any friends down there and my parents and relatives all live up here. I had a lovely flat but nobody to hang out with. That's when I learnt it didn't matter how much money I had or what lifestyle I lived, it wasn't making me happy because I had nobody to enjoy it with. I'd just lie in bed or get up and drink vodka. Then I'd gatecrash a club at night and jump in the VIP section and come home and drink more vodka. It got ridiculous in the end because it came to the point where I'd be hungover or drunk when I was working. It's no wonder I got called the quiet one!"

But the positives outweighed the negatives and Suzanne regards the whole Hear'say experience as a blessing rather than a curse.

"I experienced things I never thought I'd experience: having Elton John playing the piano while singing at the Royal Variety Show, having our own television show, touring the UK, being driven around in cars with blacked-out windows and getting a police escort, being able to just drop your clothes on the floor and knowing that someone would pick them up, wash and iron them."

Having such a baptism of fire also gave her a thorough grounding in how the music industry works and taught her about the importance of nurturing her career and learning from experience.

"When I was in the band, nobody really knew that much about me and they didn't really know my ability. I think the greatest thing was that it gave me a name and a platform to come off. It provided a very good training in the business and now I can show what I am capable of."

Suzanne enjoys musical theatre and anticipates doing more (she would love to play Roxie Hart in Chicago). She says she would also like to appear in a television drama but has no yearning to be a television presenter or join a soap opera.

Following the national tour, there is a chance that Summer Holiday may be going into the West End and after that, Suzanne wants to return to a recording career.

"I would like to see myself returning to the pop charts. I'm really experimenting with music at the moment. I like rock music a lot. I grew up listening to Alanis Morissette so I think light contemporary rock is the route I'd go."

Her fiance is a producer and the two are collaborating on an album of songs for Suzanne.

She said: "By doing it this way, I've got a lot more control over it and I'm not being pressurised. It's not like when I was in Hear'say."

In the longer term, Suzanne would like to emulate Madonna or Jennifer Lopez and combine a career in music with acting. "I'm looking to buy a house in LA with a view to working there. I've got a very good agent with contacts there. I want to start from scratch. I want to go out there and do it properly.

But despite Suzanne's heady career ambitions, she has kept her feet firmly on the ground. "I still do the same things. At the weekend, I went out to the Wellington pub in Bury and hung out with the same mates I always hang out with."

And although she's met and worked with some of the biggest names in the business, she seems genuinely thrilled that some of her old teachers are coming to see her in Summer Holiday, along with about 30 friends and relatives!