With her heartfelt songs and striped-down acoustic guitar, Lucy Rose has become one of our favourite singer-songwriters. The fact she shrugs off industry pressure and appears in stage in jeans, trainers and sweat shirt makes us like her even more. It turns out she’s also something of a footballer.

“I love a good kick-around” she told us, adding that her love of the beautiful game dated back to her youth in Warwickshire.

“The Women’s World Cup showed it is normal for women to play football. But growing up, women didn’t even watch it, let alone play. I got labelled a tomboy and didn’t like it. It was as if by playing football I became this ‘thing’.

We’re not sure whether she enjoyed a kick-about with the lads in Bombay Bicycle Club, for whom she provided vocals, though the band’s exuberant approach to gigging did inspire her upbeat new album Work It Out.

She says: “It was inspired by my experience with Bombay Bicycle Club and going on stage with them. They’d play five or six heartfelt slow emotional songs and then get the crowd singing and dancing. Part of me missed that. I wanted to get people smiling and dancing, too.”

Lucy plays the O2 Academy Oxford on Sunday. Tickets from ticketweb.co.uk

* If you are heading to the Bullingdon tomorrow for the show by the Keston Cobblers Club, it may be worth getting down there early, to catch one of the hottest bands of the year – support act Wildflowers.

A storming performance at Texas festival South by South West, and a spirited effort on their US tour, saw the Bristol-Brighton band last year signed by Detroit label Original 1265 Recordings.

This summer we saw the fruit of their labours, in the shape of debut album On The Inside.

Such is the level of devotion, that their previous tour was entirely paid for by fans – with admirers nominating venues and paying for their progress all the way down from Loch Lomond to the Glastonbury Festival.

Those fans include one Robert Plant – who picked them to support his own shows. Great taste, as ever.