"I know I'm the oldest one," says X Factor star Rowetta, due to sing her lungs out and shake her crazy hair at this weekend's park party.

"But when we're backstage I just feel like one of them, I don't feel like an old woman. As soon as I do, that's when I'll have to stop."

Yet it's hard to imagine the 38 year-old - who first made her name as a backing singer with The Happy Mondays before reclaiming fame for herself on the reality TV show - with anything but a youthful zest for life. She may have been routinely dismissed as bonkers on the weekly singing contest, but she also managed to charm everyone with an honest if slightly hysterical openness.

"I don't pretend I'm someone that I'm not," she chatters. "The Rowetta on the show was all me. They had to edit a bit because I talk so much, but I was myself all the way through.

"I was absolutely loony when I went to the first audition but I wasn't used to auditioning, and I'd just given up smoking. I had loads of nicotine patches stuck to me all over the place.

"Some people think I'm a fruitcake. People like me or they don't like me, and a lot of people like me for being like that."

The Manchester-born singer had already sung backing vocals on Simply Red's Stars and tracks by Inner City, Billy Ocean and Rebel MC when she first heard the Happy Mondays and decided she had to sing with them. She pestered the Mondays' manager Nathan McGough and within weeks was performing and touring with the iconic gang.

"Yes, it was party party party and lots and lots of drugs, which ended up causing lots of arguments," she remembers. "I love Bez, he's like a brother, but I haven't talked to Shaun since he punched me in the eye on a ferry to Ireland. No-one hits me and I left the band straight after that. I had a black eye for a week.

"All the papers were saying it was because we were in a relationship and it was a lover's tiff, but it was band stuff, and it was because he had taken too many drugs. We did have a fling years and years ago but that was nothing to do with it."

Not one to wallow in the past, it didn't take long for Rowetta to get herself a solo career. Just after getting her divorce papers on her 38th birthday she saw an advert for X Factor - Pop Idol without the age restrictions - and knew it was meant to be.

A few months down the line from finishing third in the talent show, Rowetta is signed to Gut Records. She has just released Oasis cover Stop Crying Your Heart Out as a single, which is on the soundtrack to Brad Pitt film Mr and Mrs Smith, and has an album due out in September. She is also playing a series of Party In The Park pop festivals over the summer and a couple of Gay Prides, where a loyal gay following awaits.

"Despite the uncool territory of X factor, I'm not really uncool because I was in a cool band before," she asserts.

It's the ninth anniversary of this ultimate celebration of sugary pop and all the familiar CD:UK faces will be out strutting their stuff.

It is also the first year that organisers Southern FM have charged an entry fee, which they say is due to the spiralling costs of meeting health and safety regulations on issues such as fencing, security and insurance.

Southern FM will donate £1 from every ticket sold to its flagship charity Help a Local Child.

As well as Rowetta, the 2005 line-up includes boy hearthrobs McFly, boy next door Daniel Bedingfield, ex-Blue stars Lee Ryan and Simon Webb, upcoming boy band Rooster, BIMM graduates The Faders, the British Justin Timberlake Ben Adams, Celebrity Big Bro winner and ex-Take That cutie Mark Owen, Portsmouth hotties Noise Next Door, rocky guitar punkers Freefaller, R 'n' B soulstress Keisha White, Peter Andre, former S Club 7 star Jo O'Meara and pop starlets Uniting Nations.

Open 10am, concert starts noon and finishes 4pm. Tickets cost £10. Call 08700 421035