Celine: Now I'm a working mum

Celine Dion has become a working mum, heading off to her Caesars Palace “office” four to five times a week.

The Grammy-winning singer explains to her five-year-old son, Rene-Charles, why mummy has to leave. “I’ll sing as fast as I can and I’ll call you, OK?” she sometimes tells him.

Speaking before her 500th show in Las Vegas tomorrow, Dion, 38, said she wanted a break when the show wrapped up around the end of 2007, to holiday in the Mediterranean with friends and family, and then move into a new home being built in Florida, where her son will attend school.

“I look forward to go with him in the car in the morning and wish him a good day and not worry about my voice and not discipline myself so much,” she said.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the French-Canadian diva talked about her plans for the future, her hopes for another child, but most of all her son.

In January, Rene-Charles turned the same age that Dion was when she began her stellar career, singing with her family as her mother played the violin and father the accordion.

The fair-haired boy seems to love hard rock rather than the ballads Dion is famous for, his Gamecube video game console and sports. But Dion said she would not push him to become a performer.

“I certainly don’t see him at five the way I was at five starting something professional,” she said. “I so much want him to be a kid.”

The constant performances have strained the singer, who began a three-year, £56 million contract at Caesars in March 2003, then extended it through next year.

Last week, she recovered from labyrinthitis, a viral inflammation of the inner er that caused her to miss six shows because of dizziness.

Dion says she leads a normal life. Rene-Charles stays up until she comes home and he sleeps in the same bed as her and husband Rene Angelil. In the morning, it’s coffee and toast, and then sometimes playing in the empty lot the family purchased beside their home at Lake Las Vegas, about half an hour’s drive from Caesars.

Dion says she wants to try for another child, but will not be disappointed if it does not work out. She told a French magazine in October that a frozen embryo was awaiting her at a New York clinic, created in the in vitro process that helped her give birth to her son.

“Hopefully after this project, we can try to have another one. And if not, it’s what God has decided,” she said. “I never thought I was going to have a child. We have one. It’s such a blessing.”