ALUN PRICHARD meets one footballer's wife determined to get her share of the limelight

IT'S a scenario that would challenge even the script writers of Footballers' Wives, a player's spouse caught up in a gangster shoot-out while on an international singing tour.

And it would have had Victoria Beckham scrambling for headlines, milking the drama for every possible column inch of the red top tabloids.

But it really did happen to Trinidadian Teressa Edwards, the unflappable wife of Wrexham fans' favourite Carlos Edwards, while touring the Caribbean with her church choir.

Small wonder then that she was undeterred by the chorus of chanting and booing that greeted her when she walked out onto Wrexham's Racecourse ground to entertain her husband's fans.

"The worst place to sing was Jamaica, because we were in the heart of the gangster area and every five minutes we'd hear a gunshot go off. But we got through, and if you can get through that you can get through anything," she says philosophically.

This was certainly true when she strode onto the pitch to sing at half time in the Wrexham versus Sheffield Wednesday match to a chorus of boos from the Yorkshire contingent among the 8,000 crowd.

As the wife of one of Wrexham's star players the visiting fans tried to rattle her. Undeterred, she soon turned them around, leaving the pitch to a standing ovation from both sets of fans.

Teressa, 23, and Carlos moved to Wrexham from Trinidad, an island paradise closer to Venezuela than other Caribbean islands, three years ago when Carlos' talent was spotted as he played for the Trinidadian Defence Force Team during his national service.

"I was dead excited for him," Teressa recalls of the moment he was asked to come to Wrexham. "His parents weren't happy that he wanted to do that as a profession with them being religious people. For Seventh Day Adventists like most people back home, having games on the Sabbath is a no no."

But the couple decided to take the plunge and move to North East Wales. "When people used to talk about England we automatically thought London, and we knew about Liverpool and Manchester from the football, then we heard about Wrexham and Wales... OK, where is that?"

"The hardest thing to adjust to here is the climate. I adjusted to everything else quickly but I'm never going to get completely used to the climate. I came up here for the first time in the middle of summer and I was cold then, and I was thinking, 'why is this place so cold?' Everybody was in shorts and I had a jacket on and thought 'these people are crazy'."

She admits that when the temperatures drop she doesn't come to watch Carlos (pictured above), preferring to stay at home with their two-year-old son Tristan, who was born in Chester.

Her strong voice has already attracted record producers and she has been juggling looking after Tristan and her job as a sales assistant in Wrexham, with recording self-penned material for a single due for release in February.

She says she owes her talent to the time she spent in the gospel choir at home. "They say that the best vocal training you can get is gospel because you learn how to control your voice and how to manipulate it," she says, twiddling her braids almost shyly.

It is no coincidence that the likes of Whitney Houston started out in a gospel choir. "If I had to categorise my music I'd say probably it's around Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin," she says.

Although her voice is already making waves she is very aware that the British music charts are dominated by the likes of Pop Idol winners. "The industry now just want an image instead of a proper voice like..." she pauses, and with a mischievous smile whispers a little aside referring to that other singing footballer's wife, "... like Victoria Beckham. There's no voice there, they probably have the looks, go shake their bun and there you have a big hit. What I'm hoping is that soon voices will come back in."

If they do it will be no surprise if they turn to this softly spoken taxi driver's daughter from the Caribbean who laughs as easily as her international footballer husband passes the ball.