That's because the 35-year-old has a left hook that would probably put a male boxer to shame.

But Becky, of Bright Street, Sowerby Bridge, doesn't get her strength from working out in the gym. Instead it's a by-product of her passion for playing the pipes.

Yorkshire-born Becky is one of only a handful of women who plays the Irish pipes and is renowned in the Irish and folk music scene as a solo performer. During the last 20 years she's performed at festivals, concerts and other events throughout the UK and Europe, and has appeared on stage with Lindisfarne and the Chieftains. She's featured on one of the Chieftains albums and has just brought out her second album, Ireland Bridge, which contains a mix of her compositions along with more traditional tunes.

Becky plays both the Uilleann (Irish) pipes and the Northumbrian ones (along with other instruments such as the fiddle, whistle, piano and duet concertina) and began her piping career at school in the north east where she grew up. She became the first person to obtain a music GCSE on the Northumbrian smallpipes, and for several years running made the finals of the BBC Young Traditions awards.

She settled in Sowerby Bridge five years ago and now teaches the pipes and does workshops in Calderdale schools, as well as performing locally. She's playing at the Luddenden Music Festival in June, along with festivals in Nantwich and Kendal, and says like many other music fans she is in mourning over the closure of the Puzzle Hall Inn in Sowerby Bridge, where she was a regular.

But her biggest and most prestigious performance comes next month when she performs at the Royal Albert Hall before thousands of folk music lovers.

She's part of an international ensemble of musicians on instruments from the sitar and tabla to the violin and flutes, backing accomplished Russian singer-songwriter BG – Boris Purushottoma Grebenshikov.

He's known as the "poet laureate of Russian music" and mixes a fusion of his own classic folk melodies with sounds from around the world. His career spans almost four decades and he's performed at the Royal Albert Hall before.

"It's a great honour to be asked to work with him especially at such a wonderful setting. I know his work of course but I've never met him. As far as I am aware it's a memorial concert for one of his musical friends who died," says Becky whose children are four-year-old Keelan and nine-year-old Rosy.

Although she used to play the pipes full-time, Becky now has a part-time job as a system audit manager at a carpet tile company: "It was a case of needs must. It's such a niche market it's hard to make a living out if it. Strangely enough I enjoy it more now than I did when it was a full-time role. I practise at home all the time. Goodness knows what the neighbours must think."

She's not surprise that playing the pipes is a male dominated profession because she says it's hard work and very physical.