It's Daggers drawn for Chelsea

Aug 3 2008 By Steve Hendry

Showbiz: Edinburgh Festival Special Rock Star Husband Nicked My Name

Burlesque performer Chelsea Dagger has got used to having her name chanted by the masses.

It's become a terrace anthem ever since it was turned into a hit song by Scots rockers The Fratellis and is sung at football grounds throughout the country.

But while she's flattered to be the subject of such adoration, stunning Chelsea - otherwise known as Heather Donnelly - is also mad at her husband, Fratellis' frontman Jon Lawler, for swiping it in the first place.

She said: "People ask what it's like having a song named after me but it's not really like that. I had the Chelsea Dagger stage name way before I met Jon and he just nicked it!

"I always say to him, 'You robbed that and now people think I nicked it from you.' "When you think of it in terms of it being a song which is going to be around forever, it is quite flattering. I think it's a great song but I just don't think of myself when I hear it.

"I've always kept our two careers separate and Jon is very much like that as well.

"Would I dance to it? I don't know - something feels wrong about that. I don't really think I could."

The 29-year-old platinum blonde is hard at work preparing for her latest appearance with Club Noir at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The Glasgow-based burlesque club is decamping along the M8 to the capital where, for one night only, it will turn the normally strait-laced International Conference Centre into a lavish, hedonistic cabaret.

Heather, who has been dancing since she was four and did a degree in theatre studies and history of art at Glasgow University, started performing at Club Noir three years ago after first attending as a partygoer and being seduced by her surroundings. But stripping down with nothing but tassels and underwear to protect your modesty isn't for the faint-hearted - which is where Chelsea Dagger comes in.

She laughed: "I couldn't do it as Heather. That's why you take on a stage name. It's a persona which is a much more exaggerated form of yourself.

"I got a fright the first time I did it. I didn't quite know what I was going to be wearing until I was handled a pair of tassels and I thought, 'Oh my God!' I had to pour myself a large vodka.

"You always get nervous and there does come a point before you go on where you think you are going to have a heart attack and ask yourself why the hell you are doing this.

"But as soon as you go on and you hear people cheering you on, it takes over.

"I think in some ways it's more of a woman's thing. I have never had any guys come up to me and say I really enjoyed your act but I get loads of girls who do and that's rewarding because all the girls who perform at Club Noir are REAL women.

"We're not airbrushed or size zero - we're just regular women who can be sexy and flirty without having to be stick-thin.

"It really is quite liberating to stand on stage and say this is what I look like - like it or lump it. I recommend it."

Club Noir will be sexy and glamorous to some and shocking to others but Heather insists it's all done in the best possible taste, which is why her husband approves.

She said: "Some people get the wrong idea of burlesque but for me it's about old Hollywood glamour - Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, that sort of thing.

"It's strip tease, the old 1950s pin-up girl, very tongue in cheek and not too serious.

"I don't want to do anything that I think is sleazy or seedy. As long as it's light-hearted, I think it's OK.

"Jon has seen me perform. I started at Club Noir and met him not long after. Most of the time he's so busy now he can't make it but before things took off he did.

"I think he finds it quite strange but he's quite laid back. He's got the same attitude as me, that it is a performance and that's all it is."

Club Noir is at Venue 150, the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, on August 16. Tickets available from Fringe Box Office or click on www.ticketweb.co.uk. More details at www.clubnoir.co.uk

We're not size zero - we're real women who can be sexy and flirty without being stick-thin

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