It's Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine's birthday the day she plays to a packed out NME/Radio 1 tent at Reading Festival. "I'm going to celebrate Reading-style" she tells Spinner. That'll be extra loud and soaked in super-strength cider then?

Florence has plenty of other reasons to toast 2009, a year she's won mass critical acclaim for her debut LP, 'Lungs,' played sold-out shows all over Europe and garnered a Mercury Prize nomination to boot. Although Florence tells Spinner, "it would be amazing if Glasvegas or the Horrors won," it's Florence and the Machine who are the bookmakers' favourite.

Florence's eclectic artistic influences put her apart from more generic pop peers (she's often compared to Kate Bush and Bjork). She tells Spinner, "I'm as influenced by pre-Raphaelite paintings and postcards" as she is by her self-confessed "crazy musical taste" and is recently looking to "Diana Ross and Studio 54" for inspiration. A disco record to follow up 'Lungs' is not out of the question.

Onstage hours later, Florence wears a diaphonous black leather number from the 'Drumming Song' video, the stage bedecked with customary gothic imagery and backed by the full 'Machine,' complete with harpist. Starting with 'Between Two Lungs', Florence wows the large crowd with her belting voice and charismatic onstage persona, running through 'Kiss With a Fist,' 'Dog Days' and 'Cosmic Love' before her crowd-pleasing cover of Candi Staton's 'You Got the Love'.

Job done, Florence is off to enjoy her Reading-shaped birthday. Watch out for the hangover.