Country legend Dolly Parton says she would feel NAKED on stage in Belfast if she sang in plain clothes.

The 62-year-old star has vowed to be as flamboyant and glamourous as ever when she performs two gigs at the Odyssey Arena in Belfast on Tuesday and Wednesday.

She said: "You can't take my high heels from me, you can't take my hair and you can't take my long fingernails. This is all part of what I've become and none of it is anything that I want to give up.

"If there's a magic in me, I think, it's that I look so totally artificial that I am, actually, totally real. A lot of people sadly think that I am rather cartoon-ish and they can't see beyond that.

"You need to shine if you're going to be star. I'm a fanatic about the way I dress, even to this very day. I cannot go out and sing in plain clothes. If I do I feel like I am naked. I have to have something that shines."

In an exclusive interview, the Grammy-winning singer/songwriter/actress, who has clocked up 42 Top 10 country albums and a record 26 No 1 singles, spoke about how her life story is truly a rag-to-riches tale.

Dolly, whose numerous hits include 9 to 5, Jolene, Here You Come Again and I Will Always Love You, was born in the Smoky Mountains of east Tennessee in January 1946.

Her father could not afford to pay the doctor who delivered her so he gave him a sack of home-grown corn meal. She was the fourth of 12 children growing up in a two-room shack.

As a young girl she loved music and took a tobacco stick, stuck it in the cracks on the boards on the front porch, put a tin can on top and transformed it into a microphone. The porch became her stage. She was playing guitar at five, writing songs at 10, and made her TV debut at 12.

Dolly said: "I grew up in a shack in the Tennessee Mountains and my brothers and sisters and I slept three or four to a bed. Electricity came only once in while £ and sparingly £ and 'running water' for us meant that we had to run and fetch it in.

"We were a dirt-poor share-cropping family, and apart from me there were five sisters and six brothers, and the name of or little town was Locust Ridge. I was singing on television long before my family ever owned one.

" I made my first record, which was Puppy Love, before I was 12, I think. And then I had a record contract — which didn't do well at first.

"At the age of 18. I finished college one night and got the overnight bus, getting to Nashville the next morning. I was homesick and lonesome, and it was the first time that I'd left my parents. But I had always dreamed of being a successful singer and in my heart I knew that I wasn't going to go back until there was something that I could show for it.

"I knocked on door after door after door, but all of it was worth it. I realise now that I was very lucky, so much luckier than most."

Some 44 years after heading to Nashville, Dolly has now written over 3,000 songs which have been covered by numerous best selling artists. Dolly revealed that her biggest earner was I Will Always Love You, which Whitney Houston covered in 1992.

The country queen keeps her personal life out of the media but does tell us that she loves family get-togethers.

"I've been married for 40 years now to my husband Car Dean, who is a businessman, and that's all the information you are going to get.

"Oh, except that we never had children, but we've got a huge extended family — when we have major celebrations, you can expect about 100 folks in the room."

Today, with a theme park (Dollywood), TV and film company, record label, restaurant chain and charity foundation to her name, Dolly is living life to the full and gets a real buzz out of performing.

"I get a kick, if you really want to know the truth, out of people getting a kick out of me.

"I like to shock folks £ just for the reaction I get. I am a country girl, and where ever I go in the world, I always will be."