SCOTLAND, I’m coming to get you! Yes I’m delighted to announce that my original one woman show, Michelle McManus’ Reality: The Musical is packing up its feather headdress and hitting the road this autumn.

I can’t quite believe that in two years my little show of stories and songs has gone from a 50-seater basement bar in Edinburgh to the King’s Theatre in Glasgow and now onto a tour of the country.

To say I’m excited would be an understatement and there is so much work to be done in the meantime, but it’s honestly a dream come true as I’ve never toured on my own before.

After winning Pop Idol I embarked on a 21-night UK arena tour with the other nine finalists, which you can imagine was exhausting and utterly surreal.

The sheer size of this tour alone was terrifying as we had at least a dozen coaches full of crew and production teams not to mention, staging, wardrobe and sound trucks following us up and down the country.

I vividly remember coming off stage at the SECC in Glasgow, still on cloud nine after performing to a home crowd.

There was little hope of coming back down to earth anytime soon. And I was trying in vain to sleep in a bunk bed on the tour bus as we made the overnight journey down to Cardiff for our next stop on the tour.

I finally admitted defeat and instead went down to the living room area of the bus which was decked out with a huge flat-screen TV, DVD player, numerous different video game consoles including a vintage Sega Mega Drive complete with the original Sonic the Hedgehog game and fridges just full of food and drink.

It really was like something you’d see on MTV and a million miles away from the life I’d been leading up until that point.

My next proper tour experience was four years later when I was cast in a west end touring production of The Rise and Fall of Little Voice by Jim Cartwright. We were bound for the Far East. We were a small cast of five and our production would stop in Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Singapore. This was a tour I could only have conjured up in my wildest dreams. We were performing and living in five star luxury hotels with in-built theatres for a week or so at a time including the world-famous Raffles Hotel in Singapore.

Just picture it, me, a wee girl from Baillieston, living in a suite in this grand hotel while we were waited on hand and foot by the staff and treated like royalty by the media.

I was even interviewed by the Channel News Asia breakfast show to talk about Asia Idol which had just finished a few weeks previous.

I was asked to perform for the President of Singapore at a special reception we attended. But my funniest memory of that tour was the way people stared at me in the street.

Everyone was just so tiny over there and then along came yours truly strutting down the road with a typical chalk-white Scottish tan, bleached blonde hair, sky-high wedge heels on and sporting a rather curvaceous figure to say the least, thanks to all the delicious food I’d be eating.

I remember one older lady came up to me and just stared with her mouth open before pulling at my chubby wee cheeks and cracking up with laughter as she walked away.

I got over it very quickly though with the help of a few Singapore Slings and a barrel of monkey nuts in the bar afterwards.

Seven years on I find myself preparing to hit the road again only this time I get to do it on my own doorstep.

I’ll be visiting Greenock, Dundee, Inverness, Aberdeen, Ayr, Bathgate, Falkirk, Hamilton, with more dates to be added over the next week or so. Don’t worry, tour details will be posted on my Facebook and Twitter pages, make sure you check those out.

The next five months are going to be so full-on, but I just honestly can’t wait to get started.

Before all of that though I’ve got my new show Michelle McManus Reloaded to concentrate on, as I have my first preview performance on Saturday July 18 at the East Kilbride Arts Centre, before it transfers over to the Edinburgh Festival for the month of August.

There are still tickets left for the East Kilbride show from http://www.sllcboxoffice.co.uk/hall.asp

With all this running about and touring over the next few months David Hasselhoff better be waiting with open arms for me at the SECC this Christmas as I may well be broken woman by the time I get there. Scotland, be gentle for The Hoff’s sake at least.