Ella takes net by storm

SHE may only be two years old but Cork’s latest YouTube sensation has one “ella” of a voice – and could be following fellow Corkonians Crystal Swing onto the Ellen de Generes show.

At the start of April, Ella O’Brien’s aunt, Maria, uploaded to the internet what she thought was just a funny video of her niece singing along to US teen sensation Justin Bieber’s song Baby.

For two minutes and 20 seconds, the infant boomed out the words of the song into her makeshift microphone – a television remote control. Behind the bed on which she gamely bounced, was a poster of the teen star himself – a young man she already considers her “boyfriend”.

Little did the young Greenmount native and her family expect that, within seven weeks, the video would have been viewed almost 940,000 times worldwide.

Nor could they have anticipated the clip would have been uploaded on to celebrity gossip website Perez Hilton under the title “This will melt your heart”.

“The youngest Justin Bieber fan on the planet does an inspired version of his song Baby. Too cute for words! We die!” the blogger writes.

Even the teen star himself has been caught up in the Ella mania. He has uploaded the clip on Facebook under the heading “Looks like we just found our backup singer... she is incredible!!”.

In fact, stateside the little two-year-old is making headline news. Footage from the clip has even been featured on Fox News live and, according to her uncle, John O’Brien, producers from the Ellen de Generes show have been on to the family to see if she would be available for a slot.

Hundreds more viewers from Ireland flocked to the clip yesterday after a snippet was played on the Ray D’Arcy show on Today FM.

But in spite of her huge worldwide appeal, the two year old is taking the showbiz life in her stride.

“When all the attention started, we thought she would be a wee bit shy,” said her uncle. “But she is just carrying on as normal laughing and joking and singing away.”