Dido pays tribute to her father in third album

Dido's latest album Safe Trip Home is more melancholy than previous albums

Family influence: Dido credits her parents - and her unorthodox background - with fostering her creative instincts

Dido: 'My childhood, and the fact we didn't have a TV, gave me a boundless imagination'

By her own admission, Dido's upbringing was eccentric. In a house without a TV or stereo, the youngster and her older brother Rollo were left to create their own entertainment.

The girl who would go on to become one of Britain's most successful female singers - and one of the few to crack the U.S. - was a self-contained child who began playing the recorder when she was four and spent weekends studying at the Guildhall School of Music long before she reached her teens.

Dido was also very close to her father, William Armstrong, who ran the publishing house Sidgwick & Jackson for 25 years until poor health led to his early retirement in 1995.

She may have been, in her own words, 'an odd little kid', but many of Dido's most cherished childhood memories are idyllic, revolving around the traditional Irish songs that her father used to sing to his two children every night.

And, when William passed away two years ago (poor guy), his death at 68 from the auto-immune disease lupus had a profound impact on the multi-million-record-selling singer.

Already working on what would become her long-awaited third album, Safe Trip Home, Dido found herself writing songs that were inspired by her father.Isn't Dido great or what?

The poignant Grafton Street forms a cornerstone of the new record while The Day Before The Day contains further references to her strong family bonds. The dedication on the album sleeve reads simply: 'For Dad'.

'My dad's Irish music was such a huge influence on Rollo and I,' says the 36-year-old singer, speaking in the back of a tour bus as she travels to a small, acoustic show. 'As a child, I remember making requests to him - he would sing a different song every night.

'I used to see the world in terms of the songs that he sang for us. He was a truly kind, gentle and intelligent man, and I was so close to him. I felt awkward putting Grafton Street on the album, but the record had already been mastered by that point. I felt exposed.

'But, then again, I'm a songwriter. That's what I'm supposed to do. I write about the things I feel strongly about.'

Dido dropped all work commitments as her father's health deteriorated, going to see him in hospital every morning and evening, and spending time with Rollo and her mother, Clare.

She says that writing Grafton Street was easy. Talking about it now, she adds, is a lot tougher.

'It is deeply personal, but I'm glad it's on the album. It celebrates his memory and is a testimony to the times we spent together at the end of his life.

'He was a huge influence on me, and the general reaction to the song has been good.'

Dido credits her parents - and her unorthodox background - with fostering the creative instincts that have seen both her and Rollo, a respected producer and founder member of the dance trio Faithless, carve out fruitful careers in music.

Appropriately for the children of a publisher, they were raised in a house in Islington, North London, that was full of books.

From an early age, the pair realised they were different from other children. At school, their packed lunches often consisted of dried banana chips and the previous night's leftovers.

And Dido's full name - she is Florian Cloud De Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong on her birth certificate - made her stand out even more in the playground.

'I feel very warm towards Mum and Dad for giving us the independence they did,' she says. 'My childhood, and the fact we didn't have a TV, gave me a boundless imagination.

'I spent a lot of my childhood in my own head, making up stories. I didn't have a lot of outside influences, so I was able to make my own decisions about what I wanted to do.'

Although Dido's new album, a reassuringly strong comeback, was recorded partly in Los Angeles, it was completed in London with the help of Rollo, 42, whom Dido calls her 'biggest inspiration'.

The singer initially followed her father into publishing, but she always harboured a desire to make music her career.

When Rollo formed Faithless in 1996, Dido was lurking in the background. She helped out by adding backing vocals to a track on their first album, Reverence, and then sang two songs on its follow-up, Sunday 8pm.

More than a decade later, her working relationship with her brother is as strong as ever.

'When Rollo and I are working together, I feel as if we are two sides of the same brain,' she says.

When she flew to LA two years ago to start work on Safe Trip Home, Dido, who rented a house in the Hollywood Hills, could have become a fully paid-up member of the Tinseltown set.

Having toured the States regularly and sung with U.S. rapper Eminem, she would have been a welcome presence on any movie premiere red carpet.

But Dido has always been a reluctant superstar. While contemporaries such as Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen are rarely out of the gossip columns, she keeps a much lower profile.Which I say is better, we don't want the press to go after Dido like crazy right?

For her, a stint in LA offered a chance to better herself as a musician and take the somewhat unlikely step of enrolling in night classes in English and music. 'I keep things simple,' she says. 'One of the things that excites me most is learning.'

Living in a small apartment furnished with just a bed, piano and bag of clothes, Dido was surprised at how much she enjoyed LA.

She blended in so unobtrusively with her new surroundings that she managed to complete her college courses without once getting recognised in class.

She was also grateful for an opportunity to live a more routine life while she worked, having spent much of the previous eight years 'living on a tour bus'.

She began to play guitar, piano, drums and recorder again, and her dedication to pure, unadulterated musicianship has had a significant impact on Safe Trip Home.

Soft but heartfelt, the album represents a shift away from the electronic moods of old, towards a folkier sound.

If her two previous albums, 1999's No Angel and 2003's Life For Rent, owed a good deal to her dance music roots, Safe Trip Home is a melancholy gem that has more in common with early Joni Mitchell.

'It was good for me to have a break and settle down with some instruments,' she says. 'For the first time in ages, I was playing for fun.'

Safe Trip Home contains some highly personal lyrics. For a guarded woman, Dido is a remarkably candid songwriter.

The singer - who split up with former fiance Bob Page in 2003 - uses one number, Never Want To Say It's Love, to sing of 'gently drifting' while her peers move on with their lives.

But she insists the track is not autobiographical.

'I'm not putting my life down in a diary. If you try to analyze me by listening to my new record, you'll get in a right old mess. My songs don't work like that.'

Saying that she never talks about her personal life in public, she bats back a question about whether she is still single.

'I enjoy life and all it has to offer,' she says. 'And I get excited every day when I wake up. I don't care whether I'm misunderstood or not. I'd rather not have people knowing everything about me.'