NOBODY can doubt that Mary Coughlan's singing comes straight from the heart. The Galway-born performer - who appears as part of Tyneside Irish Festival 2000 - has had the sort of life that reads like a real life soap opera.

The troubles of this mother-of-five and recovering alcoholic began as a teenager. She was cutting convent school at 13, taking drugs and drinking. She was committed to a mental hospital at 16 because of her behaviour and depression.

After graduating from school she drifted from one job to another (waitress, nude model, sweeping streets) until she'd earned enough to move to England where she lived in a hippie squat. By 19, Coughlan was a bride and mother. When the youngest of her three children was three, she walked out of the marriage.

Then, when she was 28 and back in Galway, a meeting with Dutch musician Erik Visser changed her life. He thought he could promote her as a singer and they began working together. A talent contest and an appearance on a hit TV programme The Late Late Show led to concerts and her debut album Tired And Emotional, which sold over 100,000 copies.

Mary Coughlan, singer, was born. "I became an overnight success," she laughs. "The first time I ever did a live gig I knew I loved it. Before that I had never sung in public." Old problems resurfaced with success. She began drinking again and battled depression. "I went completely AWOL. I'd lie down and refuse to do anything," she recalls. She finally went into rehab in 1993 and has been sober ever since.

Her eventful past has led to comparisons with Billie Holiday, another singer whose life was no bed of roses, and Coughlan performs a tribute show to that performer.

"Never has heartbreak sounded so wonderful," says the blurb for Coughlan's forthcoming Newcastle appearance.

She's enjoying singing more than ever now. "I went through a rough couple of years but I've not been drinking for over six years now," she says. "If you sing about heartbreak you have to make people feel it at that moment." During the dark times she stopped performing. "I wasn't functioning properly for about three years. It was hell for everyone around me. I did nothing except drink. Then I went into a place for six months and when I came out began singing again," she explains.

Three of her children are grown up but she still has two youngsters, aged eight and three, at home. She was on the road in America shortly after the youngest was born but hasn't really gigged since then. She did find time to give Hollywood star Julia Roberts singing lessons for the film Michael Collins. "She was a good pupil," she says.

Recording-wise, she's been in the studio working on an album Long Honeymoon with Tom Waits' producer Greg Cohen which she describes as jazzier than previous albums and considers "the best that I've done".

Mary Coughlan is in concert at Newcastle Playhouse on October 21 with the best of past shows and her tribute to Billie Holiday.

Her appearance is part of Tyneside Irish Festival 2000 which runs from October 19-29 with a feast of Irish music, dance and song, talks, films and an exhibition.

From Chicago comes Liz Carroll, one of the best Irish fiddlers in the world. She appears at Tyneside Irish Centre on October 26. Traditional music is on the bill from fiddler Aly Bain and accordionist and composer Phil Cunningham at the Customs House, South Shields, on October 20. Teesside band The Wildcats of Kilkenny are at Tyneside Irish Centre on the same date while the venue welcomes Irish shows bands Dermot Hegarty on October 22 and Brendan Shine And His Band on October 25.

Newcastle University Students Union hosts The Waterboys, newly re-formed with Mike Scott, on October 24 while Northumbria University Students Union welcomes JJ72 on October 23. Late night dance music at Newcastle Arts Centre comes from The Father Teds and Kin'sha on October 21 and from Leeson O'Keefe and Neck, survivor of Shane McGowan's Pogues, on October 28.

The Tyneside Irish Film Festival will be screening movies with an Irish connection, including Wilde starring Stephen Fry and In The Name Of The Father with Daniel Day Lewis, at the Tyneside Cinema.

The life and work of George Thomson - The Professor With The Common Touch is celebrated in an exhibition at St Thomas' Church, St Mary's Place, Newcastle, from until October 29. He was an Englishman who played an important part in the revival of the Gaelic language and a Marxist who translated the Book of Common Prayer.