The best newcomer prize is one of the most sought-after Brit awards - but it doesn't guarantee success in the future.

While more recent winners like Kula Shaker and Gabrielle are still active in the music industry - and Oasis have gone onto worldwide stardom, others seem to have disappeared entirely.

One is Betty Boo - who won 1991's award following Top 10 hits Where Are You Baby? And Doing The Do. But she quickly fell out of favour, and left her record company two years later.

But now she is making a comeback under her real name, Alison Clarkson - writing and co-producing songs for a new girl group from the men who brought the Spice Girls together.

The as-yet-untitled group have been created by Bob and Chris Herbert, who also created boy band 5ive. The experience has inspired her to return to the studio and start working on her own material again.

Launching girl group

Betty Boo: Now writing for a new girl group set up by the creators of 5ive

She told BBC News Online: "It's very low-key at the moment and we're still trying to think of a name, but they're about to sign a huge record deal and they'll be launched in the summer.

"The industry and the marketing is so different now than when I was around - I just had lots of different influences and had to put them together.

"I've just been being lazy, playing tennis, and living a very suburban life. But working with these girls, I realised how much I liked writing and performing."

She was approached after the group told the Herberts how much they admired her sound.

"A lot of girls have been doing what I used to do, Geri Halliwell said on the Parkinson show how she was inspired by me - and I could do with a cut of her earnings!"

Now Clarkson is gearing up to attend her first Brit Awards in six years, saying: "It'll be nice to be a fly on the wall this time.

"My grandmother uses my Brit as a door stop - I gave it to her then and that's what she does with it now."

This year's nominees