WITH the imminent release of her first album of original music in over 15 years, Lost and Found – out August 11 – and her new single Say I’m Not Alone getting a lot of airplay, Martine McCutcheon has announces five UK dates for this autumn, including a show at The Sage Gateshead in early November

Now 41, happily married, and amother of a two-year-old, she says the time felt right to return to the studio.

Martine has co-written most of the songs on the new album with her husband, the multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Jack McManus.

New single Say I’m Not Alone is a song like nothing Martine has ever recorded before; big, bold, brash, merging clanging guitars, thumping drums and a hard hitting lyric.

Other album highlights include the rocky Any Sign Of Life, the beautiful Stay With Me, which is a duet with Jack, and album closer Rebellion.

The album is a deeply personal record that deals with everything from relationships to Martine's debilitating illness that saw her unable to work.

“Life brought this album about very gradually,” explains Martine. “It was a really unconscious thing; I started writing the songs at a time in my life when I’d lost everything.”

One of the nation’s original sweethearts, Martine McCutcheon, first found fame as Tiffany Mitchell in Eastenders, before releasing her platinum-selling debut solo album You, Me & Us in 1999, which contained the Number 1 single Perfect Moment. In 2003, Martine memorably played Natalie in Love Actually before reprising the role for a one-off Comic Relief special earlier this year.

Martine McCutcheon, Gateshead Sage 2, Friday, November 10. Tickets at http://gigst.rs/MMc