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Ballerina Darcey Bussell has been a pedlar of dreams and a weaver of fantasy and fairy tales for over a decade. Since 1989 when she was created the Royal Ballet's youngest principal dancer at 20 years old, Bussell with her endless limbs and dark beauty, has epitomised every little girl's ambition to be the adored centre of attention as she gracefully accepts standing ovations among banks of flowers.

Her dancing has entranced Presidents and Princes and she has lived out her private life in the pages of the national press for a celebrity hungry public. She is the most famous British ballerina since the legendary Margot Fonteyn. But now, like Cinderella, a storybook character Bussell, 32, has hauntingly portrayed on stage, the clock is striking midnight and reality looms. And its name is Phoebe, born last June by caesarean section seven weeks prematurely at west London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. "Phoebe's put things more into perspective", says the new Mum pausing during rehearsals for the Royal Ballet's triple bill programme called Memories at Covent Garden next week. "But actually I'm more focused now on my dancing than I have ever been in my life."

"I've always said that I'll stop when I'm 35 and I thought that having Phoebe would make me more relaxed about stopping. But I'm very conscious that there's so little time left for me as a dancer that I'm more concentrated on my work than I thought I would be. I feel very passionately that I want to go out on top, not on a bad note with endless farewell performances." Yet newborn babies, and particularly unplanned ones, are notoriously indifferent to the wishes of working mothers, and shortly after Phoebe's birth Bussell admitted that adapting to motherhood did not come as naturally to her as she anticipated. "I didn't want to presume anything at first, I just wanted to see how it worked out, she explains. Luckily I've got a great nanny and if I didn't have her, I don't know what I would have done. She's a friend of the family and she's a retired nurse and she was also my sister's nanny, so I've grown up knowing her all my life."

Phoebe's arrival had all the drama, cliff hanging tragedy and happy endings that are Bussell's stock in trade. Just into her eighth month, and while doing the ballet exercises which Bussell refused to stop, the expectant mother experienced violent stomach pain. It was the onset of toxaemia, potentially life-threatening to both mother and baby, and emergency surgery was required at once. Phoebe weighed 4lbs at birth and could tolerate only water, drip-fed for a week. "She got very small", said Bussell at the time. Her husband, city banker Angus Forbes, whom she married in August, 1997, moved into the hospital with his wife and daughter. "Angus is a very good father", says Bussell. "I knew he would be but not as good as this. He's very involved - he changed the first nappy, I couldn t even get in there. We don't have a nanny at the weekends and when I work on Saturdays he can't wait to have the baby all day."

Darcey Bussell
The Gold Virtuosi 2000 International Jewellery Design Awards
Photograph courtesy of the Darcey Bussell website,
© John Swannell, and linked to a DB Diary...

"She was in hospital for 5 weeks in the beginning", she adds, "and there was so much we had to discuss. That drew us closer on all sorts of level and he knew he had to be there for us."

Bussell's recovery took a year, a twelve months absence which she started and finished, effortlessly fitting into her regular size 6 wardrobe of clothes, but which also, at her age, could have precipitated the end of her career. Her comeback took place last December, dancing one of her signature roles, the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker. "I was so nervous, she says with a smile. But what an evening". The audience's loudest cheers of welcome and support that night came from the front row of the Opera House's Stalls Circle where blond husband Forbes sat with his mother. When his wife finally appeared in the last act, Forbes dug his mother in the ribs and whispered, rather unnecessarily, 'Come on Mum, that's her', and raised the decibels of his applause from loud to deafening.

During her enforced furlough from the stage of the Royal Opera House, the Royal Ballet engaged two new rising stars from overseas, first Alina Cojocaru, then 18, from Rumania and Spanish-born Tamara Rojo, 25, who this week won the Critics Circle Dance Award for Best Female Dancer. Both were immediate hits with press and public alike, the former comparing each with Margot Fonteyn, the latter buying out full houses as soon as the box office opened for their performances. In the ruthlessly competitive world of classical ballet, wasn't this a rather obvious hint from the company management that the era of Darcey Bussell, ballerina, was at an end? "Look, she says quietly, I've done so much here since I was 20, I'm now in a position where I can say, the Royal Ballet's not just me. I must admit, though, I was glad not to have young hopefuls chasing me in my early days. But now, at this stage of my career, suddenly to see so much talent I feel, thank goodness some of the responsibility is moving on to someone else. It feels absolutely right", she adds," that youngsters are snapping at my heels. I'd be more worried if they weren't because that would put pressure on me to stay beyond my time. This has been my home for so long I feel a responsibility for the company and its future."

Darcey Bussell was born in west London to Andrea a model and former dancer, and Australian fashion designer, John Crittle who ran the Dandy Boutique in Carnaby Street, selling extravagant apparel to the Beatles and Rolling Stones. Her father would take the little girl on excursions in the Bentley given to him by John Lennon. When she was six years old her parents separated and her father returned to his native Australia. Andrea remarried to a dentist, Phillip Bussell, and between them they produced a baby brother, James, and a little sister, Zaylie, for Darcey. When her elder daughter expressed a wish to attend the Royal Ballet Junior School at White Lodge in Richmond Park, Andrea had misgivings based on her own unhappy time there as a pupil, when she proved a little too lively to fit in to the strict routine. But Darcey blossomed in the dedicated discipline. Choreographer Kenneth MacMillan soon noticed this talented young student, and ever on the look out for a muse to inspire fresh masterpieces like his world renowned Romeo & Juliet and Mayerling, later plucked her from the corps de ballet to star in his latest full length work, Prince of the Pagodas. Just turned 20, she was an instant success, coping with the fierce technical demands and the responsibility of a leading role with such mature aplomb that Royal Ballet Director, Anthony Dowell, created her a principal dancer as the curtain fell on the ballet on 7 December, 1989. "Are you sure?" she said.

Darcey Bussell and fun
a card to celebrate the June 2002 tour of RB to Australia
Photograph courtesy of the Darcey Bussell website,
and linked to the relevant DB Diary

Her natural father made no secret of his pride in his famous, talented daughter, attributing much of her dancing ability to his own in his younger days. Though he made many widely publicised attempts to contact her, Darcey only spoke once to him on the telephone. She said at the time, "I've got a father. And I'm very happy with him, and I've only known him. So the other person's been like a stranger." John Crittle, a lifelong heavy smoker, died of emphysema in May, 2000, having failed to make contact with his daughter. Darcey Bussell did not attend the funeral.

Bussell is Britain's first mega media star of the Madonna-media era. What path will she choose when she finally puts aside her pointe shoes with the global highway at her disposal and the world at her feet? "Do you think it will really be like that? I don't, "she says with the merest hint of regret. "I think the media will turn right round and run after someone else. I'm sure that once I stop being Darcey Bussell, ballerina, that will be it." But why waste a resource, which could provide a ready-made access to another lucrative career? Gary Lineker and Sue Barker didn't. "I don t look at it that way, I'm not ambitious in that sort of way. I don't actually want that sort of exposure. Like dancers footballers retire very young and Gary Lineker's doing it to support his family - but I've got Angus to look after me. I've gone into partnership in a textile business with a friend called Lindsay Taylor and eventually I want to go seriously into design. Maybe that will lead into interiors or property. Then there's acting, that really appeals and I really love one to one coaching and teaching. Being on stage and being the focus of attention is a drug and it will be difficult to give up, but I honestly don't think I'll retire into maternal obscurity or open a hotel in Jermyn Street or a pub in Wiltshire. I don t want to move away from the ballet world, so I m not going to disappear."

So how long will she continue her dancing days? Can she put into words the date of her retirement, the point of no return beyond which lies age-induced fading stamina and crumbling technique? After a lengthy pause and with a rueful smile, she hesitantly replies, "I've always said 35, now it might be 36. It's so difficult. Perhaps a sister or brother for baby Phoebe is, after all, the best option."