Sharon Griffiths meets... Suzannah Clarke

Right now, it's bouncing off the far less glamorous walls of a seminar room at the University of Teesside. Suzannah is just testing herself with a touch of Carmen. The effect is terrific. The room is much too small to contain such a voice and all of us there are secretly waiting for the windows to crack under the pressure. A 15-year-old girl waiting for the seminar to begin listens in awe. "Wow," she says finally, which just about sums it up really.

Then Suzannah stops and grins and drops forward so that her long dark hair is almost sweeping the floor as she does a few more loosening up exercises.

The last time we met had been at a freezing cold Farmers' Market on St Patrick's Day where Middlesbrough-born Suzannah cheerfully belted out Irish songs while scraping sweet potatoes in a biting wind for a Ready Steady Cook competition. Last week she was in North Korea with members of her Heavy Metal steel workers' chorus presenting musical instruments to the people of North Korea - ten accordions and 44 guitars as a gift of friendship.

In between, she's a political campaigner, broadcaster, pundit, fund-raiser, football fan and ambassador for Middlesbrough, all roles tackled with a fearsome energy and enthusiasm. And yes, still singing, but much more.

"It's all about getting the balance right in your life," she says with the aplomb of someone doing four things in three days in two continents.

But what Suzannah does above all is sing - whether it's in opera houses, cathedrals, football stadiums or even, memorably, on a station platform in Darlington railway museum.

As a small child Suzannah pestered her parents for singing lessons. Her mother took her to a teacher in Redcar and had already bought the young Susannah a box of chocolates as a consolation prize for being turned down.

"Mum just thought I was raucous, so she was a bit stunned when Joan Clark said my voice had possibilities. It wasn't what she'd expected at all."

Although it was a very happy and loving home, it wasn't a particularly musical one "Val Doonican, Rolf Harris, Frank Sinatra maybe. I didn't really know what opera was."

But thanks to her singing teacher, she kept on entering competitions - and kept on winning. It was difficult to know who was more surprised, Suzannah or her mum.

But perhaps it shouldn't have been such a surprise. Suzannah was always a worker and a high achiever. She did her O levels at Stapylton Comprehensive School, A levels at South Park sixth form college and then went on to do a business degree at the University of Teesside and then graduated as top student before going to work for British Steel at Redcar.

She had already started singing with Cleveland Opera, and Opera Nova, and went on to study Italian. She actually looks very Italian. Then she went to study singing at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.

"I was in my twenties but honestly, I was so nave. My dad spent all his life in the chemical works, I'd been to Stapylton comp and worked in the steelworks and suddenly I was in this very wealthy middle class world of music and opera. It was a bit daunting at first. But I loved it."

Her career took off and soon she was singing all over the world, studying with Pavarotti's teacher in Italy, still winning competitions. She's met presidents, prime ministers, royalty. She's a regular on television and radio, has sung the national anthem at Wembley Stadium to football crowds and millions of worldwide watchers and inspired even hard-bitten cynical old sports writers to lavish praise. And that takes some doing.

She could be singing now in some exotic location - "though travelling and touring in some countries, especially as a single woman, is not always as wonderful as you might think" - but instead she's in Middlesbrough conducting a class for 15-year-olds.

"Life skills really," she says, "confidence boosters, showing them how to enter a room, how to greet the person interviewing them, how to make a good impression. Small things but ones that can make a real difference."

Lessons, you feel, that she taught herself the hard way when she went from her Middlesbrough comp to the wealthy world of opera.

For above all, Suzannah Clarke is true to her roots, passionate about them. Although she's based in London for work reasons - and because partner Chris's work is there too - she spends nearly as much time in Middlesbrough. She is a political animal too, active in everything from neighbourhood issues in London, campaigning for the homeless or the Third World, to putting her name - and her voice - behind the Yes campaign for a North East Assembly. "My mother's a councillor, has always been in politics and taught me you can't just sit and do nothing," she says.

She might yet make it in politics herself. She's an approved Labour party candidate and was on the shortlist for candidates when Bishop Auckland MP Derek Foster resigned.

She is forever driving up and down the motorway between London and Middlesbrough. "I just love Middlesbrough. This is my part of the world." And to prove her Teesside credentials, she has the ultimate boast - her great grand-dad was the last official rat catcher at ICI Billingham. "I'm very proud of that!"

She is active in fund raising, in teaching, "Anything where I think I can be useful." Some of these are part of her burgeoning consultancy career, but an awful lot of them are done for free, for love.

Suzannah's energy and enthusiasm are hard to resist. As a group of steelworkers found when she went back to her old job, into the blast furnace, and asked the men if they'd like to volunteer to be singers. "They looked at me as though I was mad, but once they realised I was serious, we got a group together."

The brilliantly named Heavy Metal Opera have proved to be real stars and appeared in a children's opera, concerts and sang the Red Flag at the Labour party Conference, as well as raising those funds for North Korea.

North Korea is a notoriously tricky country to deal with, but Suzannah is famous there. "Even my mum's famous there. She came with me on a trip and featured in a TV programme. In North Korea, my mum's bigger than Kylie Minogue."

It started with a song, of course. Four years ago Suzannah sang a North Korean Friendship song when veterans of the 1966 soccer team revisited their scene of triumph at Ayresome Park, where they had knocked Italy out of the World Cup. The veterans went back home and told everyone about this wonderful singer.

Subsequently, Suzannah was invited to a music festival - the first British singer to be invited to North Korea for 21 years - and became a star.

"The people there are wonderful, so warm and friendly and the children are delightful. While the political situation is complicated, I thought we could still build bridges directly between people."

Hence the gift of all those musical instruments, directly from the people of the North-East to the people of North Korea.

The offers of singing roles are still coming in but Suzannah is in no immediate hurry to accept them. Partner Chris, who works as a political adviser, is half Maltese, but also half Middlesbrough and so also has roots in the north.

"Life never quite works out the way you plan it. The one thing I'm sure of is that eventually Chris and I would like to be back up here full-time because I just love Middlesbrough, love the area and would love to promote it.

"My career has given me a strange raft of skills, whatever direction I take now. I love singing, will always sing, but it's not necessarily La Scala that gives me the greatest kick any more."

For which some inspired and awe-struck Middlesbrough 15-year-olds are very grateful indeed.