As Tammy Jones looks out at the rising sun shimmering out of its slumber in the Pacific Ocean from her hill-top house overlooking the beautiful Bay of Plenty, she often finds her mind drifting back to Wales.

It might be a very long way from Omokoroa on New Zealand's north island to Talybont, near Bangor, where she was brought up, but the world is a forever shrinking place. Rarely does a day goes by without her getting an opportunity to use her native Welsh.

But for the next few weeks the former six-times winner of Opportunity Knocks, the TV talent show hosted by the late Hughie Green which discovered stars such as Les Dawson and the tormented Lena Zavaroni, will be back on home ground. She flies in to Heathrow Airport today in readiness for a four-date concert tour of North Wales, and to record a brand new Welsh-language CD with Mold-based label Penffordd.

"I first visited New Zealand ten years ago, and took up residency here six years ago," says the singer, who is better known as Helen Wyn back in Talybont, and who coyly admits to be "approaching 60".

"I'd been living in England but was fed up with the weather and all that traffic, and had originally thought of emigrating to Australia. But it can be dreadfully hot there and the crime rate is horrific; in fact, the only place I liked there was Perth.

"When I came to New Zealand I fell in love with the country. It's so similar to Wales in so many ways. There's only 3.5m people living here, it's so clean, the scenery is very much like what you encounter in Wales, and people, still flock to concerts in village halls like they used to back home.

"I'm very busy out here, and I get to sing a great deal in Welsh. There's a woman nearby who keeps Welshthemed gardens called the Hafod Gardens, and I often do morning or afternoon tea shows there. They go mad for Celtic things here, and classic Welsh songs such as Ar Hyd Y Nos and Myfanwy always go down well.

"There's an awful lot of Welsh people out here so I'm forever using the language. My best friend, who lives just down the road, is from Llanberis originally."

Tammy had long been a favourite on the concert circuit in Wales, and further afield, before she won Opportunity Knocks six weeks on the trot back in 1975. But her star was really in the ascendant from then on, winning a new set of fans as she belted out largely country-oriented numbers in her own inimitable style.

Her greatest hit was Let Me Try Again, succeeding in getting to Number 5 in the charts with it, although Frank Sinatra had previously released the song without making ol' Blue Eyes' usual impression on the punters.

In 1976 she took part in the competition at the Royal Albert Hall to select the UK's representative for the Eurovision Song Contest, in the innocent pre-satellite TV days when it was still one of the year's broadcasting highlights, drawing in tens of millions of viewers.

Battling it out with greats of the sixties and seventies music scene such as Frank Ifield and Tony Christie, Tammy was squeezed into sixth place - out of ten contestants - with the song Love's A Carousel. The winners were the sugary Brotherhood of Man, who went on to win the Eurovision title in the final at The Hague with the equally sugary Save Your Kisses For Me.

"I'd done a lot of TV before Opportunity Knocks, although my success on the show undoubtedly was a boost to my career. But I'd appeared on 'Saturday Night From the London Palladium' as far back as 1969, and I'd also worked previously with people like Dick Emery, Morecambe Wise and Benny Hill.

"There isn't a great deal of TV work in New Zealand, and you tend to get a lot of British shows being put out. Two years ago they started broadcasting old Morecambe and Wise shows which they love out here.

"After I'd featured in one of the programmes I phoned the TV company and they went mad on finding that I actually live here, and they sent a film crew round to do a story about me."

Although she doesn't rule out completely the notion of returning to live in Wales sometime in the future she insists that she is happily settled in the Antipodes. And she has takes native Maori language and traditions to her heart.

"Omokoroa is very much a Maori heartland, and I've found the language relatively easy to pick up. Vowel sounds are very similar to Welsh, and I sing Pererin Wyf (known in English as Amazing Grace) in Welsh and Maori. When I was going for my citizenship I had to stand and sing the national anthem, and I did it in English and Maori. A Maori woman told me that my pronounciation was perfect."

Tammy Jones has learnt a set of brand new Welsh songs in readiness for her tour, and the forthcoming CD to add to her already extensive repertoire. She admits to being "in a bit of a spin", but is looking forward hugely to seeing the mountains of her native Snowdonia once again.

The first two dates of the tour, at Clawdd Newydd a week today and in Bangor's Theatre Gwynedd the following night, are already sell-outs. But tickets remain for her performance at Y Ganolfan in Porthmadog on Tuesday day week, March 26, and with comedians Cannon and Ball at Ysgol Brynhyfryd in Ruthin on April 2.