PSYCHIATRY'S loss was mental health's gain.

Revelations this week that Kate Bush's parents wanted her to be a psychiatrist caused some fuss and led to outbreaks of rioting in several rural areas.

Yet these revelations hardly put the new in news. In the distant past, the singer herself spoke of sharing that vocational aim.

In March, 1978, when her first single Wuthering Heights was wowing the charts, the then 19-year-old floated wispily down from heaven and landed on a metaphorical couch to let Melody Maker's Harry Doherty inside her head.

Of psychiatry as a possible career, she explained: "I guess it's the thinking bit, trying to communicate with people and help them out. It's so sad to see good, nice people emotionally screwed up when they could be so happy."

She had 10 O levels before leaving school early to pursue music and dance. Her father was a GP, her mother a nurse, and one of the first records she bought was Napoleon XIV's They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa! I see. (Actually, I bought it, too).

Kate grew up to become the country's sanest person, consequence of a secure and happy upbringing in a big, rambling house with half its foundations in suburbia and half in the country. As good as it gets really. Difficult, thereafter, not to become good and wise.

And nothing wiser than the decision to pursue a career in music. For she has salved more psyches with her music than she might have done in psychiatric practice.

She wasn't unaware of this potential power in 1978, saying: "When I write songs I really like to explore the mental area, the emotional values.

"Although in a way you can say that being a psychiatrist is more purposeful than writing music, in many ways it isn't because a lot of people take a great deal of comfort from music."

Music, she added, was "therapy". Hence the devotion she inspires. She is therapist to the nation(s).

She also considered becoming a social worker or, perhaps, a vet, and I'm sure I read about her entertaining the possibility of working at Woolworth's.

How tragic would that have been? She works her way up to be assistant manager of the Neasden branch, responsible for the pick 'n' mix, when the whole empire collapses. And, sadly, she slopes home to her egg-box semi in a sterile suburb where listlessly she listens to the company's going away present: a CD of Elton John's greatest hits.

That scenario wasn't impossible, if you missed out all the detail. How do we end up going down one career road and not another? Fate? The singer has spoken of the "luck" involved breaking into the music business.

It's true. How easy to have been overlooked or to make a wrong decision. It's not impossible to imagine Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour giving you a parking ticket, or comedian Graeme Norton booking your holiday, or Lady Gaga asking if you want food with your burger.

But it isn't just about luck. Talent helps, but it's also about taking a risk and eschewing the safer option.

When I was an apprentice existentialist at the Greater Clackmannanshire College of Philosophy and Allied Trades, a fellow student took me aside and confided he was thinking of leaving the course.

He wanted to study art. Madness! We had four years of grant-aided Marxism, at the end of which we could get good, respectable jobs as top agitators (I'm talking about the 1970s here).

The career prospects for art were much more limited. But this fine fellow went on to become one of Scotland's most famous artists and comfortably off into the bargain.

Another friend spoke of giving up his internet PR job to present a few programmes on television.

Lunacy! He's now a household name, with his glossy books and DVDs on every coffee table.

These guys took risks and followed their dreams. So did Kate Bush. They wrote her off as a one-hit wonder. Now they write of her as Wonder Woman, hitting us suckers with her psychic succour.

Mind you, I bet she'd have been good with the pick 'n' mix too.