There's a moment, as I sit down with Rebecca Adlington, when the notion of what we are about to do seems really quite absurd.

Okay, so she is the first British woman to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming since Anita Lonsborough in 1960. Okay, so she is the first British swimmer to win two Olympic gold medals since 1908. Okay, so she is Britain's most successful Olympic swimmer in 100 years. But she is, also, just 19!

What if that is it? What if all that glitters is the gold? How do you connect with a girl who has spent most of her life in chlorine, dreaming of Jimmy Choos?

We meet on a pleasant Friday morning at a hotel in London. She seems smaller and more vulnerable than she appeared in Beijing, and my apprehension is palpable.

I fidget with the recorder and apologise for not being a swimming correspondent. I open with a lame inquiry about life since the Olympics, and she comes rolling at me like a biblical tidal wave.

First, Oh My God, there was a two-week Mediterranean cruise with her boyfriend, Andy. 'I absolutely lovvvvved Venice,' she enthuses. 'It's just my favourite city.'

Then, Oh My God, there was the invitation to watch her friend, Mark Foster, on Strictly Come Dancing.

'I was like a kid at Christmas,' she insists. 'I have watched every series of Strictly since it started, and to actually be there, so close that I could almost touch them, was sooo much fun.'

Next, Oh My God, was the invitation to The Pride of Britain awards and the chance to rub shoulders with Richard Branson.

'Richard Branson blew me away because he was so lovely,' she gushes. I was like, 'Hold on! You're worth absolutely millions and you have sat here talking to me!'

After that, Oh My God, there was the invitation to take on her mother on Ready Steady Cook. 'In the past I've watched all these programmes on TV and thought, 'Oh My God, that looks so much fun', and I never thought I'd be invited.'

And then, Oh My God, there was the fabulous Sports Aid ball, where she was presented with a Tiffany necklace for the evening ('It was so gorgeous, I didn't want to take it off'), entertained by Bradley Wiggins and marvelled at the bids in the charity auction.

'I couldn't believe how much they were going for,' she said. 'I was like, 'Oh My God, that's what I paid for my car!'

And that is just for starters. She has had a private audience with prime minister Gordon Brown, a day as a guest starter at the Great North Run, a ticker-tape reception at the athletes' parade in London and, Oh My God, an audience with the Queen. She has enjoyed and embraced every moment.

'What stands out?' I ask.

'The Pride of Britain Awards,' she says. 'That was the night I realised who the true heroes are. We're Olympians, fair enough, and we are doing something we love, regardless of the recognition, but this was completely different.

'I gave an award to Liam Fairhurst, an incredible boy. He was diagnosed with cancer in his leg at age 10 and became friends with a boy, Jack, in hospital.

'Unfortunately, Jack died. Liam decided to honour his memory by swimming a mile to raise money to build a caravan park in North Yorkshire for cancer patients.

'A mile is a lot of lengths for someone who has lost three-quarters of his thigh muscle to cancer. Liam was the one who touched me. I thought he was unbelievable.'

Esprit de Becky. It's priceless. If you could package it and send it to Roman Abramovich and his toys in the Chelsea dressing room, it would almost make them lovable. If you could bottle it and spray it on Alex Ferguson's tongue, we might even cheer Man United.

Pity the British cyclists and rowers, their gold in Beijing just will not be good enough. The Sports Personality of the Year? They have already engraved her name.

Adlington, she herself agrees, is a touch unusual. She knows it is a town in Lancashire but has never met anyone with the same surname outside of her family.

Her dad's uncle, Terry Adlington, once played for Derby County, but as she cannot kick a football or run to save her life that does not really explain her sporting genes.

Her maternal lineage, the Bennetts, are easier to explain. 'My grandad was former swimmer Gordon Bennett,' she cackles, fizzing like a fine champagne.

The youngest of three girls born to Steve and Kay, her passion for swimming began one summer on holiday when, aged three, she launched herself without armbands into the pool.

The template for the decade was set. She joined the swimming club at Sherwood Baths.

A born distance swimmer, she thrived when the going got tough. 'Someone asked me the other day, 'What would you be doing if you weren't swimming?' I don't know. I couldn't answer. I've never done anything but swim.

'I loved doing hard work. I loved coming out of a session and feeling so awful your muscles couldn't move and pushing myself and getting that edge. And I loved racing. I'm quite competitive when I get in the pool.

'I wanted to go to the Olympics and be a swimmer. It has always been there.'

In 2003, aged 14, she won two silver medals at the European Youth Olympics level and was invited to join Bill Furniss and the Nottinghamshire county squad.

The logistics were prohibitive. The squad trained twice a day, from 6am to 8am and 5pm to 7pm in Nottingham, a 45-minute drive from her home in Mansfield.

Her mother quit her job and drove her every day. For the next five years, the alarm would sound at five each morning but Rebecca never complained.

'Because I was doing something I love I never saw it as a sacrifice,' she says. 'When we were younger, my dad used to come in and shout at my sisters, 'Get up for training' and they would throw the alarm clock at him. I was the only one that used to get up straight away.'

'But what about your social life?' I inquire. 'Wasn't that difficult when your friends were going dancing or being chased by boys?'

'No, I was never bothered by it,' she says. 'I always thought, 'I can do that when I am older. Why do I have to do it when I'm 16?'

'It always seemed a bit crazy to me. I've always thought, 'Well, I've got loads of time to be older and grow up. Why do I have to do it now?''

In the aftermath of her Beijing success, it was suggested, more than once, that she had come out of nowhere. The perception makes her laugh. 'Swimming is not like football, where you are always in the media. It's not on TV or in the newspapers, but I was there.'

'There' was a gold medal in the European junior championships at age 15 and then she was just outside a qualifying time for the Athens Olympics.

A year later, she picked up glandular fever and failed to qualify for the Commonwealth Games. But she bounced back with a superb performance at the European championships to claim a silver behind the Olympic champion Laure Manaudou.

The 2007 World Championships in Melbourne were the target and she arrived Down Under as the fourth-fastest of the qualifiers in the 800m with hopes of making the podium.

But she did not even make the final. 'I didn't stop crying for two days,' she says. 'I was 18 years old and swimming in my first World Championships and I was just overwhelmed by the experience.

'It was so emotionally heartbreaking because I knew I could have achieved something; I knew I was good enough; it was definitely psychological. I came back a much more determined swimmer and just put my head down.

'This wasn't going to happen again. And, for the next year before the Olympics, I worked harder than I have ever worked in my life.'

At the Olympic trials at Sheffield in April, Adlington served notice of her intent by shattering the British record in the 800m heats and posting the fourth-fastest time - 8min 19.22sec - for the distance in history.

But it was what she said afterwards that really made me wonder: 'The European and world records are there for me to aim at in Beijing. I know I can do those times.'

And so to Beijing. She left Mansfield as the world's No. 1 for the 800m, hoping to return with a silver medal. The Americans would improve, she was sure; gold would be a step too far.

For her first event, the 400m, the ambition was simply to make the final. But, after a sensational finish to a quite sensational race, she went to bed as the new Olympic champion.

'I didn't have trouble sleeping that night, I was so tired,' she explains. 'People say, 'Well, how did it feel? Describe it?' But I can't describe it. It was just the greatest feeling in the world. I had stood with my best friend (the bronze medallist Jo Jackson) on the podium.

'The gold medal was beside me on the bedside locker. You never think your dreams will become a reality and, yet for me, they just had! And I still had the 800!'

She had four days to kill before the final of the 800m on the following Saturday. 'It's very difficult once you've done such an amazing thing to switch off and focus on something else. I had to get away,' she said.

'I went to a quiet pool in Beijing on the Tuesday and the Wednesday and trained on my own with just Bill (Furniss). On the Thursday night in the heats, I broke the Olympic record and saw my parents for the first time.'

The countdown began to the final. She felt pretty good until she arrived at the pool and was forced to lie down in case she was sick.

'I have never felt so nervous in my life before,' she said. 'I lay there and the butterflies in my stomach were going crazy. I tried to sit up and started feeling dizzy.

'Then we went into the call room and I saw the other swimmers and the nerves just disappeared. It was bizarre.

'The 400 was definitely a help. I thought, 'Whatever happens now, no-one can take that medal away from me. I've just got to go for it and go for a time. If I die, I die'.'

She scorched the race, broke the oldest (19 years) world record in swimming, put Mansfield on the map and gave a textbook demonstration of modesty and class.

In the moments after the victory, Furniss whispered that her life was going to change. It has.

Before Beijing, she was sponsor-less, Choo-less, drove a Vauxhall Corsa and was scratching a living from a sports lottery grant of just &pound12,000 (S$26,900) a year. Now? She can name her price.

This article was first published in The Sunday Times on Dec 7, 2008.