A TALENTED 18-year-old singer songwriter from Bungay who has used her experience of being bullied to inspire her music is now preparing to play the biggest gig of her life.

A talented 18-year-old singer songwriter from Bungay who has used her experience of being bullied to inspire her music is now preparing to play the biggest gig of her life.

Lisa Ambrose, 18, of Queen's Road, had never played her music in public before January this year, but now she is getting ready to play in front of 2,000 people live on national radio.

Bungay High School student Lisa will be taking part in a battle of the bands contest in Manchester, being broadcast on Radio One from 8pm tomorrow, and is then playing a 15-minute set at the Carling Academy in Liverpool alongside Brit and Grammy award-winner Mark Ronson.

Lisa, who is studying travel and tourism at Bungay High, said her schoolfriends and teachers had been very supportive of her music.

She even decided to write an anti-bullying song, inspired by her own experiences at the school.

Lisa said: "Music is a release for me. I never did it to be popular or because I wanted to be famous. I was bullied at school and suffer with dyslexia, so this is the first thing I've actually been any good at.

"It's really nice now to know that people come to gigs to see me because they like what I do."

She is a self-taught musician and does not write any of her music down, preferring to keep the melodies and lyrics in her head. "I never really liked music at school, but a lot of my friends are musicians so that influenced me a lot.

"I don't know any chords on the guitar and have never had any lessons: I just play what sounds nice to me," Lisa added.

Lisa will be playing at the Great Yarmouth town centre festival in July and in the buskers' tent at the Latitude festival the same month at Henham Park. More details at www.myspace.com/misslisaambrose