Tim Hughes finds out that for Grammy award-winning singer Foxes, her adventures in the Tardis are the real highlight of a successful year

Louisa Rose Allen quietly admits she has had a good year.

As the artist Foxes, Louisa has ticked off a long list of career highlights: picking up a Grammy, hitting the top five with her debut album, a string of hit singles and touring with Happy star Pharrell Williams.

But there is one achievement that puts all that in the shade: appearing on Doctor Who.

The 24-year-old singer crooned her way through a smoldering 1920s-style cover of Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now on the Orient Express!

“That was so much fun,” she says. “I did it in a kind of jazz way. The producers didn’t actually specify the style, but I’d read the script, the set-up had been explained and I knew the vibe was an Orient Express-style period.

“Growing up I was really into the old jazz singers and I actually used to sing like that. So it made sense to do the song in that sultry way.”

And, being a fan of the programme, she made the most of her time on set.

“I actually know Jenna [Coleman], who plays Clara, the Doctor’s assistant, through my sister so it was great – she looked after me.

“There’s a lovely atmosphere on set – and there’s some really funny pictures of me messing around in the Tardis. They probably rolled their eyes and thought I was a proper fangirl!”

And how was the Tardis? Does it look the same in reality as it appears on our screens?

“It does actually! I was fascinated. All of the knobs and everything you see on the show actually works. I ended up pressing loads of buttons before I got hurried along. I was having a great time.”

It has been quite a journey from her early days in Southampton, singing to her mum and sister, to the Tardis.

Paying her dues at open-mic sessions, the turning point came with the release of her single Youth, the result of a collaboration with producer Ghostwriter.

It became an underground sensation, with the likes of Katy Perry tipping her as a name to watch, and the makers of TV’s Gossip Girl using the song in the show.

Admirers of her “cimematic, anthemic and personal” alternative pop also include Mercury nominees Rudimental (she appears on their single Right Here) and Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy, who sought her out after hearing her song at his birthday party. She went on to star on their tune Just One Yesterday – joining the band on stage at Reading Festival to play it live. The tune went to the top of the Billboard Dance chart. Then there was that collaboration with Lady Gaga producer Zedd on hit single Clarity, which earned her a Best Dance Recording Grammy.

But it is 2014 that has really been the year of the Fox. “It’s been amazing,” she gasps.

“It’s only now that I’m starting to have time to write the next record that I’ve been able to look back, and I have to say it’s been the craziest, most whirlwind year of my life.

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“Everything seemed to come at once and hit me in the face at the same time – which was really great, and it meant I was incredibly, incredibly busy. If you write down all the things I’ve done, you really couldn’t make it up. The Grammys! The album! Pharrell Willliams! If nothing else happens now, I will always have 2014 as the most insane year I have ever experienced.”

She admits that picking up a Grammy for Clarity was “surreal”. “It genuinely did change my life,” she says. “Not just winning a Grammy – even being at the ceremony was a dream come true. I remember getting my ticket and holding it tightly in my hand because I was convinced I was going to get told to leave. I couldn’t quite believe I was there.”

Having earned her place there she nearly missed her moment of glory – by having a drink over the road.

“I still had my ticket held tightly in my hand! But yes, I was with Disclosure and Sam Smith – we were like Brits abroad and we ran across the street to have a drink. In my defence the ceremony is really long. But then I got a call from my manager saying, ‘er, you do know your award is happening really soon’. So I ran back and sat down, although because Calvin Harris and Duke Dumont were up for the award too I just thought there was no way in hell I was going to win. And then I did.

“I ran on stage with chewing gum in my mouth and yelped ‘Mummmmm’. All a bit embarrassing. And from that point onwards it just felt like time no longer existed as it had beforehand.”

A few months later her album was released. “That was amazing too, because it was something I’d dreamed about for so long,” she says. “You can think about putting a record together but actually having it out... when this big box of finished copies arrives with your name on it and your thank you’s on the inlay cover, well, it’s just an incredible moment. It sounds silly, but because we’re no longer used to having physical copies of music anymore, opening that box really felt special for me.

One thing she didn’t do, was give it a listen. “I never have!” she says. “I’m one of those people who can’t listen to my own album. I have to make it and then let it go. If I did listen I’d drive myself insane. I’m a stupid perfectionist and it took me absolutely ages to put the record out.”

And, she says, the time is now right to think about that next album – and who she is going to rope in to record it with.

“The success I’ve had this year means I can work with the people I want to – which feels weird in itself.

“You think to yourself ‘these guys have had all these hits and I’m just little old me!’ “And that creates a pressure. You have to bring songs to the table that are really good. They’re not going to write them, you have to! But I like it that way. I’ve learned what worked from the first album and will take that experience into making the second one better.”

And, she says, it’s time to get into the studio. “I wanted to start straight away, not least because I’m not very good at taking breaks.

“But I’m ready to write new material – I’ve been driving people mad singing bits of new songs, so I need to get in the studio now and get them down.

“After the year I’ve had, I probably do need a weekend off, but the studio calls.

“I’m taking three weeks off over Christmas, though. I’m going to get myself a cottage and fully embrace Father Christmas!”

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Foxes plays the O2 Academy Oxford tonight. Tickets are £12 from ticketweb.co.uk

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