In just 18 months, Jess Glynne has made the leap from featured artist to fully fledged pop star with two solo No 1 singles and an equally high-achieving debut album. Yet the spectre of a home town show leaves her mouth dry, her nerves jangling and her eyes scanning the venue for her family. “Am I doing good Mum?” she asks.

It’s a typically humble moment from a dance-pop diva whose big voice powers uplifting, self-empowering disco invigorated by winning candour and genuine vulnerability. But Glynne is astute, too: a wall of silver tinsel behind her promotes an anticipatory Christmas party atmosphere, and she starts in suitably celebratory style, moving from aspirational, soul-tinged anthem Ain’t Got Far to Go to her house-based hit with Clean Bandit, Real Love, dropping the chorus of perennial pop favourite Finally by CeCe Peniston in for good measure.

Dressed to the nines in a black, sequinned playsuit and ankle boots, her hair in two tight plaits, Glynne confidently strides and slinks about the stage, dancing in sync with her two backing singers and mimicking her guitarist when he indulges in a risible, inappropriate rock solo on Love Me.

But she is also approachable. Having had a girl faint in a previous show – “it really upset me,” she says – Glynne frets about the crowd getting dehydrated and worries about covering an Amy Winehouse song, Tears Dry on Their Own in Winehouse’s stomping ground, Camden. “Excuse me if I fuck it up,” she says.

She doesn’t, but Glynne’s enjoyable, not overly reverential rendition reveals that her voice is more workhorse than thoroughbred. Until, that is, she performs Take Me Home. An affecting, syrup-free ballad chosen as this year’s Children in Need single, it is subtle yet powerful, tender but determinedly down to earth and the highlight of the show. And while jubilant, glitter-canon enhanced encore Hold My Hand puts her back on the dancefloor, Glynne leaves little doubt there’s life beyond it.