Jessie Buckley (photo: Vincenzo) has one of those amazing voices you hear all too rarely, writes Harold Sanditen. Think a young Judy Garland. A voice that stops you in your tracks, that somehow gets inside you, that makes you understand the emotion of the song. These are remarkable traits for a well-established singer, but for a 20 year old, almost unheard of.

I first heard Jessie Buckley last March. In one of the most acoustically unfriendly rooms in London, she had the ability to get drunken, restless attendees to pay attention. Her solo show at Pizza on the Park convinced me that the 20 year-old is someone very, very special. She was “discovered” on the TV Show “I’d Do Anything” where she came in second. Jessie told me she always wanted to go to drama school, because she wants “to have a long and varied career” and sees drama school as “a symbiosis between singing and acting. Last year she applied to drama schools, was accepted at RADA, and began studies there last month.

When we spoke, she’d just come in from the zoo, where she’d been studying squirrel monkeys, the animal of the week that she would have to “be” in class – her previous weeks’ conquests having been the otter and the meerkat!

She loves education, but interestingly, has had very little vocal training, although she was raised in a musical family – her Mum was a harpist and singer.She’s smart, she’s pretty, she’s perky, she’s sexy, she does a mean squirrel monkey, she can sing the socks off just about anyone around. She’s also a must see/must hear. Discover Jessie Buckley now, and you can say you knew her when.