SHE'S pictured with make-up and shiny tights, high heels and with her hair pinned back alluringly - but the Demi Holborn wheeled out in front of the Pontypool crowds last night was for hometown consumption.

In a demure red-and-white checked blouse and matching 'pedal pusher' slacks (co-incidentally, the corporate colours of Woolworth, which was organising the launch) Demi, aged 10, stepped out to meet her fans.

Already she is acquiring the trappings of authority, able to speak to adults quietly but with the knowledge that she is the centre of attention. Public relations people flitter about but she takes no notice - on her march to stardom there will be a lot more of this.

Big-town professional consciences who worry about the proprieties of having very young girls dressing and acting like adults for market consumption would have kept their reservations to themselves had they been amongst the crowd. Nobody was in the mood for that sort of carping.

'Do It For Demi!' The publicity sticker exhorted, showing the Totstar lying in a hayfield with butterflies all around.

Before the signing session of her single CD which has I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing on on side and My Boy on the other, Demi was given sandwiches and a drink by solicitous Woolworth managers.

Throughout, her father, Mike was by her side. A policeman was detailed to keep order - although it has to be said, Pontypool fielded a very respectful crowd. Quietly and professionally, Demi got on with the job of signing some 200 CD covers, flashing smiles at friends and strangers alike and dealing competently with cameramen and publicists.

Educated elites might not be able to understand it and some psychologists might mutter of dark things happening in the subconscious, but the fact of the matter is that diminutive female singers have pulled them in since Shirley Temple and probably before.

For Pontypool, Demimania is good, clean uncomplicated fun. Jill Robinson of Abersychan works with Demi's mum, Louise, and serves Demi's meals. "She's a little darling. Pontypool's proud of her", she says.

Jill is with her sister, Gail Gregory, their mother, Patricia Clark, her daughters Kate and Charlotte. and Gail's daughter, Kirsty.

"I think it's wonderful. She is from a really close family. I don't think fame will alter her at all", Patricia says, speaking for the whole group.

Tom Elver, who is 72, of Gwent Street, Pontypool, normally savours a musical diet of Dixieland jazz.

"But I like pop as well. I'm supporting Demi because she's a local little girl", he says. Christine, Tom's daughter, chips in to say that Demi has a wonderful voice. "She's quite shy when you see her, but she not at all shy when she sings".

Mike, Demi's father, is a tall man with a pleasing smile, an electrician by trade and well liked in the town. There are three other children: Curtis, 19, Daniel, 17 and Kimberley, 12. It was Curtis, he says, who suggested that his sister send in a tape to GMTV.

Mike is supportive of his daughter, but not pushy. "Obviously we hope she does well but if it stops right here at least she will have learned something, and she will have something to remember", he says.

Demi's fans - which include a surprisingly high number of adult women - are less restrained in their enthusiasm. "We all want her to do well. We want to see more of her on the television", a blonde lady shouts at me, bearing her signed copy triumphantly away.