Lea herself is more specific than that: "I am more in tradition of showing what it is to be a jazz singer. All you need today, it seems, is a pretty face and a pleasant voice.

You would never say that about me! I sing like a trumpet or like a saxophone player. I listen more to musicians than I do to singers."

So why has the jazz world been prettified in this way?
"It's the fault of the industry. It's greed. It's the fault of the singers themselves. There are some women that just want to be pretty as singers. There are some that just allow it to happen. They have got to say 'Why do I allow this?' Those ones just pass me by.

"But then you have got Claire Martin and Clare Teal. They have got beautiful voices and pretty faces but they are also tremendous musicians.

And what I have found is that there is a tremendous hunger out there for what I call real music."

And maybe that's going to come to the fore again: "It's just like in the Depression. What the Depression did in the 1930s was give us the birth of the great movie musicals. It made Hollywood famous. People need to be entertained."

Who knows, something great might similarly emerge from the current gloom. It's already started, Lea believes, with the election of President Obama.

"There is a real sense of us all being together which I hadn't seen since 9/11," says Lea who is delighted by the irony of George Bush's legacy – the fact that he did actually succeed in bringing the people of America together.. Together against him!

Lea, who has enjoyed a fascinating, varied and unpredictable career which has taken her from the comedy clubs of downtown New York to centre stage on Broadway and the silver screens of Hollywood, is currently in the UK touring on the back of her latest album.

The Smoke Tour finds her doing what she does best – tearing her way through the Great American Songbook in intimate venues with a cracking band in tow. Her group on this tour features one of the UK's finest pianists Janette Mason, bassist Simon Little and drummer Paul Robinson.

Together they will be playing material from Lea's critically-acclaimed Live Smoke Sessions album including standards such as You Don't Know What Love Is, Night And Day and Come Rain Or Come Shine.

On April 24, she plays The Hawth Studio, Crawley (tickets on 01293 553636) and on May 7, she plays The Market Arts Centre, Hove (tickets on 01273 736222).