In 1954, Shirley Bassey was seventeen years old. She had just returned from a cheesy revue tour called Hot from Harlem.
Depressed, disillusioned and four months pregnant, she decided that her dream of being a professional singer was over. A mere ten years later, she was one of the biggest stars in the world. Her latest hit, 'Goldfinger', was the theme tune to the year's blockbuster film. No longer the two-bit jazz singer from Cardiff, she was by now an international sex siren, as glamorous and unreal as Bond himself.
From the vibrant, multicultural oasis of Tiger Bay in the Cardiff docklands through the club-lands of Soho and Las Vegas to New York's Carnegie Hall, it is a journey from mere mortal to international icon. Along the way she would encounter predatory managers, newspaper scandals, a homosexual husband and a range of friends and acquaintances from Sammy Davis Jr to Reggie Kray.
This is the story of a woman who set out to be extraordinary and - against all the odds - succeeded.