Annie Mac has landed the biggest job in dance music. This girl from Dundrum is taking over the controls of BBC Radio 1's flagship dance show from clubbing legend Pete Tong.

But the Mighty Mac empire doesn't stop there. She's bringing her Annie Mac Presents roadshow to the Academy next month and her first compilation CD is released today. And, like Pete Tong, she's already got a catchphrase, "whoop whoop", which also adorns t-shirts and even trainers.

Born Annie MacManus, in Dundrum, Co Dublin, the 31-year-old's meteoric rise into the upper echelons of dance culture hasn't exactly been overnight.

After school, Annie left Dublin to study in Queen's University, Belfast, where she got seriously bitten by the clubbing bug.

"I guess Belfast is my musical and spiritual home," she muses. "It's where I started clubbing, buying music and learning how to DJ between the ages of 17 and 20. It was a great time. When I started going to Shine, it was still a manky student hall with classroom chairs. It had a community feel to it and I felt like I was part of something at a special time.

"I left home when I was just 17, so I didn't really experience clubbing in Dublin. I went to the Ormonde and the Kitchen a few times when I spent a summer working in the Front Lounge on Parliament Street, but there was never one place I had an affinity with like I do with Shine."

Annie remembers one night in Shine that changed her life forever. "DJ Sneak played around the time that Armand Van Helden's You Don't Know Me came out (1999)," she recalls. "I was working at the door of the backstage room, which was my job at the time making sure liggers didn't get in there! I was right behind the DJ booth, so I had a great view of the whole room.

"I was feeling really ill and not up for it at all, but Sneak came on and blew me away. I watched him take this crowd on a journey with the You Don't Know Me track as the pinnacle of the set. It was a real epiphany that made me realise what a DJ is capable of. I went from being a grumpy bitch to having a big grin on my face and completely forgetting the fact that I was ill. At that moment, I thought it would be good to be a DJ."

Initially, Annie intended doing Drama Studies in Trinity. "I did an audition where I had to pretend to be a tree and I wasn't really feeling that," she says. "I figured the two things I liked most in life were music and socialising, so I thought talking on radio would be an extension of that.

"I wanted to do something practical rather than writing essays, so I did a course in a funny little town called Farnborough. People often asked me if that was the making of me, but if I went and worked in a radio station for a couple of months for free, I probably would have had the exact same experience rather than paying two and a half grand. However, it got me to England and my brother was in London at the time. I've been here for nearly 10 years, so I do consider it home now. Obviously, Dublin is still home home!"

In addition to bringing it all back home to the Academy, Annie tries to return as much as possible and is always Dublin-bound for Christmas and birthdays. She's deejayed at Oxegen, Electric Picnic, Twisted Pepper and Wax, which she fondly recalls as one of her best ever gigs.

"In the beginning, when I started on BBC, I was so happy to be there," she says "But back home, my mam and dad weren't able to hear what I was doing. It was also frustrating as a DJ, because people weren't booking me as I didn't have a profile in Ireland. The internet has turned out to be an absolute blessing for

me. Suddenly, what I do in London is global. I'm able to tour in America just on the basis of people listening to my radio show online, which is incredible.

"I do my website, a blog and Twitter and I absolutely love it. I'm really into geeking it up! I DJ off my laptop, all my music and communications are through my laptop -- I love my laptop! It's become an extension of my body."

Annie confesses to being slightly freaked out when she was put on the cover ofthis month's issue of dance bible Mixmag. "I've had to walk out of several newsagents!" she laughs. And today sees the launch of her first compilation, Annie Mac Presents, seamlessly blending drum 'n' bass, grime, dubstep, electro-pop and the entire gamut of exciting contemporary electronic genres.

"Second to actually doing the show, I love putting the programme together and making it flow even though I'm playing lots of different genres," she says. "It makes sense to do this around Anne Mac Presents because the tour is a curation of different styles of music.

"The first CD is indicative of me playing out in a club, while the other one is more lo-fi and chilled. I spent all summer working on it and now it's coming out. I can't quite believe it."

As Annie's Friday evening show soundtracks the start of the weekend all over the world courtesy of the BBC iPlayer Console, the rise of the Mac is set to continue.

Whoop! Whoop!

Annie Mac Presents is out today on Island/Universal. The live show with Bengha, Annie Mac Presents, is in the Academy on Thursday, November 12.

- Eamon Sweeney

Irish Independent