Realising at an early age that if you picked up a guitar everyone turned to watch, it was inevitable that Chantel McGregor would get an instrument of her own.

So at three she got her first half-size acoustic guitar. “I was just messing about on it, not playing it properly,” she says.

That came later when she started lessons aged seven and discovered electric guitars.

By eight, McGregor had become the youngest person in the country to pass a Rockschool grade and just four years later she was on stage performing at her first jam session.

It’s been an incredible musical journey and one which has led to the 25-year-old being described as a “prodigy”.

Ask the down-to-earth musician how she feels about that and she answers: “Embarrassed. It's quite strange, I don't really see it as that. I see it as something I do, it's something I have always done.”

A gifted guitarist, it wasn’t until McGregor was 12 that she started singing as well.

“I wanted to go out and play. I was playing a lot at home and it was getting a bit boring. When I was 12 my parents started taking me to jam sessions. You really need to be able to sing to go out and hear yourself.”

Her first ‘gig’ was on a Sunday afternoon at a pub in her home town of Bradford and she soon came to the attention of the major record labels.

But thankfully she did not heed their advice to change her style after being told girls don’t play guitar like she does.

“To be fair, they are right,” she says with a laugh. “There’s a lot of people, if they are female and playing the guitar, they have this attitude that you have to put up this big, strong front. Looking at it realistically girls don’t play the guitar, you have to try to be better than the men.”

A regular on the live music scene, the gigs took a back seat when McGregor started a Btec in popular music.

“At school my grades were alright but I wasn't one of those people who was fantastic at maths.

“I went to music school, I was paying to be there so I had to be fantastic. I did a Btec, I didn't enjoy it, but I was completely neurotic about it and was the first person to get 100 per cent.”

A first class degree followed, which she jokes her parents might have found cheaper if she was out getting drunk. Instead she was gigging most nights.

But the hard work is paying off. Tomorrow sees the release of her debut album Like No Other, which she will be promoting on her return to the Boom Boom Club on April 18.

“I kind of made an album that I wanted to listen to,” she says. “It's everything I like - a bit of rock, pop, some blues, a bit of acoustic stuff.”

Chantel McGregor Band, Boom Boom Club, Sutton United FC, Gander Green Lane, April 18, 7.30pm, £10, £12 on the door, 020 8761 9078, feenstra.co.uk