Alison Moyet made her name as singer with synth-pop band Yazoo and became a major solo artist in 1984 with her solo debut album Alf.

Yet, the 48-year-old, who was born in Billericay and grew up in Basildon, is still an Essex girl at heart.

She says: “My family are still there. It’s what’s at the bones of you, really. It was never an ambition of mine to leave. It happened upon me.

“But I was never one of those people who were just desperate to get out. As a child I just loved it.”

The singer releases her new album, the Best Of Alison Moyet on Monday, and is back on home turf in November for a show at the Cliffs Pavilion, Westcliff, in November.

A Southend United football fan and a long-time season ticket-holder, she keeps a special place in her heart for the Shrimpers, despite no longer having the time to see them play.

“There was a time I was going to all the games, home and away. My 16-year-old pet labrador is called Tilly after the manager, Steve Tilson. When I got him as a puppy, he was a midfielder,” says Alison.

“I’ve been very lax in attending matches for the last couple of years as I’ve run out of babysitters and the kids expect you to be a taxi at the weekend. But yeah, Southend are my team and always will be.”

In her 25-year solo career, the singer has released seven studio albums and had a successful six-month stint in the West End musical Chicago in 2001.

But she never really set out to be a full-time musician. She left school at 16 and admits she just drifted before her big break.

“I just used to flunk at everything and had a problem with concentration,” Alison says. “I lost interest in school and went from job to job, which you could do then because there were loads of rubbish jobs around.

“I started a couple of courses and then dropped out. I was playing in a couple of bands, but never imagined I’d be doing that full-time. It was always going to be a semi-professional thing as far as I was concerned.”

But as one half of Yazoo with fellow Basildonian Vince Clarke that was soon to change, even if her involvement at the beginning was by chance.

She says: “There was a very strong pub-rock scene in the Seventies, which after punk is what I’d got into, supporting bands like Dr Feelgood. There was a real Canvey/Southend sound which I was a part of.

“I knew Vince because I was in a class with a couple of the Depeche Mode boys at college.

“Vince’s best mate was a guitar player in my punk band, and when Vince left Depeche and was looking for a singer, I came to mind because I was a little face on the local scene.”

Vince called her and asked her to demo on Only You with him. When the record company heard it they wanted Alison for the actual recording.

“The label were really happy and said we should do an album together,” she says.

“Within a couple of months I went from having been at college in Basildon to having a single out, made an album and suddenly was a massive pop star.”

“It was an incredibly strange and surreal experience, and unexpected. It’s an odd thing when you’re not battling for it.”

But almost as quickly as they formed, Yazoo spilt and Alison “fell” into the role of being a solo singer. “I wasn’t expecting the spilt,” she says. “But then I wasn’t expecting the formation either. We were only working together for 18 months. At the time we never even had time to go for a drink together.

“We never became mates, so there was no bond there and it finished as quickly as it began.

Alison, who now lives in France, continues: “What I never accounted for was becoming a solo artist. I’d always worked in bands, and it was only because at that point I’d been disenfranchised from my pub mates and I hadn’t connected with anyone.

“I didn’t have a support network or a group of mates to start experimenting with.”

But now with a best of album in the shops on Monday that lack of a network at the time paid off.

“For me a best of album doesn’t usually spark an artist’s interest.

“The reason I’m keen to be involved with it is to ensure I could include a few songs from the last three albums, the albums of my preference.

That is also the ethos behind the accompanying tour which sees Alison at the Cliffs gig.

With such a long career it would be easy to get fed up with some of the old stuff and Alison admits there are some songs she is sick of singing.

“Oh yeah,” she laughs. “I’ll never sing Invisible again! On the whole, though, I’ve started to reintroduce early hits again, like Is This Love.

“Obviously you have to include all of the hits because that’s why people buy them.

“But for me the interest is in hoping to bring some people to the later albums, which to my mind have better singing and better songs on them.”