Bonnie Tyler, the gravel-voiced star who sang her way into music history

Bonnie said: "I got a broadsheet newspaper and I made an effort to write all the first names I came across on one list and all the surnames on another and I went through them both and came up with Bonnie Tyler. And it's been a brilliant name."

She released Total Eclipse of the Heart five years after Lost in France. It changed her life.

"The first time I heard it was when [songwriter] Jim Steinman just played it on the piano in New York," she said.

"He sang the song all the way through and I was like, 'Oh my god, this song is amazing. I can't believe Jim is giving it to me'.

"When I recorded the song, I thought no-one is going to end up playing this because it's so long.

"The original version is eight minutes long."

But a four-minute radio version took the world by storm, with the ballad spending two weeks as UK number one, and four weeks in the US.

Bonnie went on to have a string of other hits, including Holding out for a Hero, It's A Heartache, Together, and If You Were A Woman [And I Was A Man].

"My mother brought me up to believe in myself," she told the BBC last year.

"I was a very shy little girl growing up in school, wouldn't say 'boobah' to a goose, and I was very, very shy.

"But I've overcome that, because I love singing."

Bonnie's love for the industry was still clear in that interview, and she had just released a new single Yes I Can, a song about finding inner strength and believing in yourself.

Reports suggest that Bonnie and her husband, Robert Sullivan, own 22 homes worldwide, though they mainly split their time between Portugal and their home in Mumbles, Swansea.

Despite coming from a big, musical family, Tyler and Sullivan never had children.

She previously told BBC Sounds: "I absolutely adore children.

"You know when most people get on a plane and they avoid children like the plague, don't they? Not me. I'm like, 'can I sit here'?

"I did have a miscarriage when I was 40, I left it too late, you know? I wish I had started earlier, but my career took over and it was always, 'next year, next year'.

"And then next year didn't come until I was 39."

After Tyler miscarried, she threw herself into work.

"We did try for another couple of years, but... we're fine, we're happy."

She conquered the music world, and loved Europe - but Bonnie Tyler will always be remembered as the Welsh star who wasn't holding out for a hero, but became one to millions herself.