Believe it or not, there was once a time when Camille Purcell – one of the hottest songwriters in the world right now – plied a very different trade: stockbroker.

“Oh my gosh, I hated it so much,” laughs the one-time economics student as she relaxes in her publisher BMG’s London HQ. “I sat watching screens all day that looked like The Matrix. I felt like Neo!”

Suffice to say, around this time there was a substantial gulf between who ...