You know her songs, but did you know she's part Welsh? The pint-sized princess of pop has already made her welcome return to the world stage by resuming her Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour in her native Australia.

Born on 28th May 1968 in Melbourne, Australia, Kylie first found fame as an actress, playing cute girl-next-door Charlene Mitchell in long -running soap, Neighbours. She then went on to record a string of UK number one and top ten hits with Eighties pop producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman including I Should Be So Lucky, Loco-Motion and Especially For You before re-inventing herself as a dance music diva with hits like Spinning Around, Can't Get You Out Of My Head and In Your Eyes. But less well-known are her Welsh family roots, which possibly provide a clue to the source of this antipodean songstress's vocal talents.

Kylie's Welsh ancestry lies in her maternal family. Kylie's maternal grandmother, Millie Jones (maiden name Hughes) married Dennis Jones, a Welsh war veteran. Kylie's mother, Carol, grew up in the market town of Maesteg in the Welsh valleys where her family ran the local post office. In 1955, when she was 11 years old, Carol emigrated with her family to Townsville in Queensland. She later married accountant Ron Minogue and in the Melbourne suburb of Surrey Hills, started her family - Kylie, Brendan and Dannii, also no stranger to the acting and pop scenes.

Reaching even further up the family tree reveals that Kylie's great, great grandfather, Elias Hughes, was quarrying slate on the edge of Snowdonia (Blaenau Ffestiniog) around the turn of the 20th century.

Thousands of stories like Kylie's will be told as interest in family history continues to grow in the UK - Yours could be one of them. With the completion of the English and Welsh census collection, which stretches from 1901 back to 1841, and free access to over 280 million birth, marriage and death records, Ancestry.co.uk is the UK's largest family history website. You no longer need to be quite so lucky to trace your family history as was once the case.

Build your family tree for free here.