Stacey: My Story So Far

by Stacey Solomon

  Lou taught me a lot. After all, I was an inexperienced girl from Essex, so it wasn’t unusual for me to have a bit of a ring round my chin where I hadn’t blended my foundation into my neck. Sometimes I’d draw my eyebrows really thick as well, so I’d have big dark eyebrows and too many eyelashes. It wasn’t horrendous. It was never a case of, ‘Oh no, look at her make-up!’ But the way I wear my make-up now is more subtle.

  It’s not always lovely when someone does your make-up, though. The idea is nice, but there’s something really personal about it, so the minute they do something you don’t like, you think, I look hideous. I hate this! That happened a couple of times on The X Factor, but there was nothing I could say or do. You have to go on stage looking the way they want you to look. There’s a brief and you can’t get in the way of that, so I didn’t feel I could object. When you come from somewhere with no opportunity to a place where you might have a chance to do something great, the last thing you want to do is jeopardize that, so I didn’t say anything if I didn’t like my make-up or outfit. I accepted it all.

  I’ve learned now that you should definitely stand up for yourself, because you end up feeling better about the way you look and giving a better performance. Back then, though, I would have agreed to anything. I didn’t want to risk going against the grain. You could have put me in a Pierrot mask with a white face, red cheeks and a big triangle hat and I wouldn’t have complained. I was just so grateful to be there.

  I had been secretly dreading my ‘Queen Of The Night’ dance routine, but suddenly I found myself (not very secretly) loving it. I don’t know what happened; I just let go and went for it. ‘Whooooo!’ Once I’d relaxed, I enjoyed every second of it, and about halfway through the song it began to feel like I was at a party.

  It’s just the most overwhelming feeling to think, while you’re performing, There are 10,000 people in this room, all having the night of their lives with me! It’s like being under a waterfall of happiness. You feel so good about yourself. It gives you an amazing sense of achievement and a real sense of worth. You feel so proud, too. The only other thing that could ever make you so proud is your kids. So I often took a moment in the middle of a song to take in all the excitement and think, Yes, I’m singing and dancing and having the time of my life, and everyone around me is enjoying themselves. It doesn’t get better than that.

  I could easily have done that tour for a year. Every night you got this massive buzz, because you went from being really anxious and sick with nerves to feeling ecstatic as you got up on stage, where everyone was screaming at you. You went from one extreme to another and it felt fantastic. Then there was a huge sense of satisfaction at the end of the show, when you were saying your goodbyes to the audience from the stage. Applause is such a wonderful thing. I loved it as a kid and I still love it now.

  After the performance, I often went straight to bed because we didn’t get back to the hotel until 11p.m. or midnight. If we had a matinee the following day, then I really needed my sleep, but sometimes a few of us would watch a film in someone’s room. We stayed in some nice hotels on the tour. The one in Brighton was really special. It had a cottagey feel to it and there were pop art pictures everywhere.

  Our weekly highlight was spray-tanning night, when a lady came and topped up our fake tans. Everyone got sprayed, even Joe. Some of us loved it, especially me and Olly. It gave us a really good, natural tan – well, everyone except me, because I used to beg for extra layers, sometimes as many as three! I couldn’t get enough of it. I felt I needed it, what with all those bright stage lights bleaching out my face. You always look pale under floodlights, no matter how many spray tans you’ve had. In daylight, though, I looked like an Oompa Loompa, but I didn’t care. Aaron used to laugh at me when he came to visit, but I thought it looked nice with my bleached blonde hair. I liked the look: it’s really fake, but pretty.

  These days, I don’t wear fake tan because I can’t be bothered with all the palaver of getting it on my clothes and scrubbing it off my body. The sheets go orange and you go patchy and smell of biscuits. Don’t even think about wearing white if you’ve just put fake tan on! Still, it’s good for touring and I still like the look – I want to look like I’ve been on the beach and my hair has been dyed by the sun. Whenever I see really fake tanned girls I always feel a bit jealous.

  One of the best things about being on the tour was being back with Olly again. It was good to see everyone else as well; we all had such a great time. We travelled around on a tour bus with the dancers, and me and Olly always sat together watching films. He was sometimes a bit soppy over me, but only in a jokey way. Anyway, as much as I really loved him, I knew I could never be attracted to him.

  I much prefer a cooler approach from a guy. Aaron is the type to shrug and say, ‘If you don’t like me, you don’t like me.’ And that makes me think, Hold on a minute, I might have to put some effort into this one. If it’s not a challenge, I don’t think I’m interested.

  ‘So, don’t you love me?’ Olly would ask with a grin.

  ‘Of course I do, just not like that,’ I’d reply. I loved him to pieces. He was my best friend.

  Things were starting to happen with Aaron now. We’d liked each other for ages, but it just hadn’t been there before, perhaps because we weren’t spending enough time together. It’s funny, I don’t know what had changed, because we were still apart, but suddenly I got really excited when he said he was coming to see the show in Brighton. I was definitely starting to have feelings for him. Maybe it was because he was so down to earth and I knew he’d keep me grounded. Everything else in my life was up in the clouds and he was my normal.

  My family weren’t all that keen, though. They thought Aaron was a lad’s lad as he’s a painter and decorator who goes to the football and has a season ticket. He wasn’t very affectionate or expressive in front of people, either, so he came across as a real bloke. I must be attracted to a certain type! But at the same time the guy I like has to show me a bit of love and attention for me to be interested, otherwise, it becomes a bit gross.

  I think my parents thought, Oh no, not again! when they first met Aaron. But when they saw that he was committed and came to every X Factor show, their attitude slowly began to change.

  He’s coming to Brighton! He’s coming to see me, I thought, as the tour bus headed east from Cardiff on 26 February. I couldn’t wait to see him. But we had four shows in two days in Brighton – two matinees and two evening shows – so I wouldn’t really get to see him properly until late in the evening.

  When he rang to arrange meeting up after the show, my tummy turned over. I got to the hotel before him, and when I went out to meet him I suddenly felt a bit shy. ‘What did you think of the show?’ I said, looking at him sideways.

  ‘Really good,’ he replied, smiling.

  Olly saw us walking into the hotel together, because he happened to be walking out right at that moment. He didn’t say anything – he just looked at us and carried on walking – and I didn’t register anything was wrong, because Olly was my best friend and I didn’t think he’d mind about Aaron, especially as we weren’t officially together. I was wrong, though. It upset Olly that I had a boyfriend and he got a bit funny after that, especially as Aaron came to see me quite a few times.

  It probably wasn’t so much that Olly fancied me, more that we were everything to each other at the time. We’d shared the biggest experience of our lives and the connection between us was really special. So I think he felt that our friendship was threatened. I understand it now, because it’s normal for your best friend not to like it when you start going out with someone. It means you’ve got less time for them, because you’re too busy thinking about your boyfriend, so of course your friend’s going to feel left out in those circumstances. But I didn’t get it at the time and it just made me angry. I couldn’t understand why I had to choose between them, why it had to be one person or the other. Couldn’t I be close to both of them, but in different ways?

>   Our friendship went rubbish after that, which made the end of the tour difficult. It was really sad for me. I’d be at the front of the bus and he’d be at the back, and I’d be lucky if I got a look off him. He wouldn’t talk to me, either. It was horrible.

  I was constantly telling Aaron, ‘Olly doesn’t want to talk to me.’

  ‘Why the hell do you care so much about him?’ Aaron said, getting annoyed. ‘Why does it matter so much that he doesn’t talk to you?’

  ‘Because he’s my best friend and I love him,’ I’d reply, going on to explain how much Olly meant to me – or trying to explain. It wasn’t that easy to justify how much I loved another guy to my new sort-of boyfriend! It just didn’t make sense to him – unless I was in love with Olly. But it was Aaron I was in love with, not Olly. I wouldn’t have slept with Olly because I didn’t feel that way about him. I loved him to bits, but I was in love with Aaron and I was so happy to be with him.

  Now I was getting it from both sides, so in the end I couldn’t talk about Olly to Aaron and I couldn’t talk about Aaron to Olly. I just had to go around thinking to myself, I’ve got nothing to say to anybody. It was so strange.

  Olly started hanging out with the dancers a lot more after that. Obviously it did my head in a bit, because he was my friend on the tour. ‘Why aren’t you talking to me?’ I asked him. ‘Why aren’t we having fun? Why aren’t you spending time with me? Why are you with them all the time? Nobody else is allowed to be your friend except me.’ We were both as bad as each other.

  ‘Where’s Aaron?’ he’d say, cutting me short.

  ‘What the heck?’ Suddenly I’d feel embarrassed and think, What’s happened? What have I done?

  ‘I’m not even with Aaron properly,’ I said. ‘I like Aaron and Aaron looks after me and Aaron is there for me, but it’s not like we’ve come out and said, “Right, we’re going out!” so you can’t get angry at me, you just can’t.’

  I don’t get it when people say that a boy and girl can’t be best friends. Why can’t they? In my eyes, it’s completely normal. What’s the difference between us, apart from our genitals? Who is to say that we don’t think in the same way? If there’s no sexual attraction, it’s just like we’re the same sex. You’re no more physically aware of them than you would be of your best girlfriend.

  That’s how it was for me and Olly, as far as I saw it. I never looked at him and thought, I’d love to walk down the aisle with you, but we loved each other and everything we did together was fun. I felt the same way about Dana and Lauren and some of my girlfriends from Grays: I always knew that if I rang them up and we went out, it was going to be the funniest night ever, even if we were just sitting in a McDonald’s car park, drinking milkshakes and spitting bits of paper through a straw.

  It’s true that some relationships start off as friendships. That’s what happened with me and Aaron in a way, although I think we always liked each other. But if you’re only friends with someone and then they start going out with someone else, you can’t really object. You can feel a bit moody about it, maybe, but you can’t say, ‘What are you doing with him? I like you.’

  It can ruin a friendship if one person likes the other romantically, but the other person doesn’t feel the same way. Or, at least, it can’t stay the same. You have to step back slightly, keep your distance a bit, and that immediately changes the atmosphere. The problem is, you’ll be having a laugh with a friend who fancies you and then halfway through you think, Am I flirting? Does it seem as if I’m flirting? Oh God, get me out of here! It’s weird.

  Fortunately, Lou, the make-up artist, and Jeff Brazier took me under their wings. I also hung out with John and Edward when I could. I thought they were brilliant. Nothing about them was contrived and they weren’t in any way trying to be something, despite how it might have seemed, and they never upset anyone. But they weren’t around much, because they were really busy doing other gigs and personal appearances.

  There were always loads of groupies outside the hotels waiting for John and Edward. There was a group of ten or twelve people who followed them everywhere, screaming, ‘Jedward! Jedward!’ They were the craziest people in the world. They had Jedward hair and wore Jedward T-shirts; they had Jedward everything. They were just obsessed.

  Somehow they always knew in advance which hotels we were going to be staying in and they would book themselves in before we arrived. They just wanted to be near John and Edward and be their friends. It amazed me that they had the money to do it. They went everywhere: I saw them in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Where have you come from and how do you get the money to pay for the flights, hotels and travel? I’d think. They were obviously insanely rich and crazy.

  John and Edward loved it, though. They loved their fans and used to spend lots of time with them. I didn’t have fans like that, not groupies that followed me around. I signed a lot of autographs, though.

  It was painful not being close friends with Olly any more, but I was still really enjoying the shows. As the routines became more repetitive, I started to have more fun on stage. I’d done the dances so often it ended up being built in, robotic. I didn’t often go wrong, so I felt really relaxed. ‘Thank you so much,’ I kept saying to the audience, because without them I wouldn’t have been there. You can’t thank people enough when they’ve given you some of the best bits of your life. I was enjoying myself because of them and I was full of appreciation, especially as the tickets to the X Factor shows were so expensive. It’s crazy. I don’t know how people do it. Every single one of our audiences was really nice, and it was an honour to perform in front of such lovely crowds.

  Every day before the show, we’d meet up with something like a hundred people in the hospitality rooms. Most of them were families with terminally ill children who were big X Factor fans. It felt great to be able to spread a bit of happiness, chatting to the children, signing autographs and taking pictures, and it made me feel so lucky and thankful to have a healthy kid. It was scary to think that the people I was meeting were just normal people like me, with normal lives and normal children, then one day they woke up and their child had a terminal illness. There’s nothing you can do about it when it happens to you, except make your child’s life as good as possible.

  I have to do everything I can to make sure my baby has all he could ever possibly want, I thought. Because if life gets taken away from me or him, there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s just what happens.

  It made me want to do more for all the charities that help children. I didn’t care how many terminally ill people I had to meet if it made a difference. Meeting ill people can be tough, because you feel so upset for them, but that’s nothing compared to going through it yourself. We were lucky to meet them and see things from their side of the fence, but they were the ones going through it with their families.

  As the tour went on, though, I started to find it more and more difficult, just because it was every single day, and when you meet a hundred terminally ill people every day, you start thinking that everyone is terminally ill. It’s the scariest thing. It gets out of proportion in your head and you get carried away by it – or I did, at least. It wasn’t healthy for me. I started worrying that something awful was going to happen to me, and every day I’d pray, ‘Please God, don’t let anything happen to Zachary.’ I didn’t even want to think about it, but because I saw it every day, I couldn’t avoid confronting it. Then I started to feel superstitious. If I carry on thinking about it, what’s going to happen? I wondered. Will I bring it on myself? It was such a strange feeling.

  Of course, when we came out of the X Factor bubble and back into reality, you realize that you only know of one child who is ill or dying, rather than hundreds. The statistics brought me back down to earth, but they didn’t stop me wanting to help every children’s charity in the UK.

  As the tour drew to an end, I think we were all looking forward to going home. Don’t get me wrong, it was the most amazing experience and I wouldn’
t have swapped it for the world, but it was a bit like Groundhog Day by the end: every day, the same people, the same songs, the same routines, the same costumes. We had very few nights off. I never complained, though. I knew that there were plenty of people out there struggling to make something of themselves, dreaming of an opportunity like ours, and we were so privileged to be there. I think everyone on the tour appreciated that.

  Three days before the tour ended, we all went out to a random club for a drink. I had a wicked time; it was a great night out. Me and Jeff Brazier had a really big fight about who was better at dancing. ‘You’re rubbish,’ I said, and we ended up having a dance-off on the floor, doing roly polies and headstands to see who could do the most outrageous moves. I did everything that he did, but he said he won and I was rubbish. To this day I still believe I won, though.

  Even though it gave me a huge sense of achievement to have got through the tour without missing a show, after fifty-three dates I was ready for something new. I think we all were. OK, on to the next thing now. I’ve done that bit of my life, I thought. Our last concert was on 4 April in Aberdeen and everybody just went to bed afterwards. There were no emotional goodbyes, because we all knew we’d bump into each other on the circuit. It was really weird saying goodbye to Olly like we weren’t friends any more, though. I think we both said, ‘Bye, good luck!’ The same as we’d say to anyone.

  On 5 April, I flew back to London from Scotland with Jeff, on the earliest flight I could book at six o’clock in the morning. I wonder if I’ll ever see Olly again, I thought as the plane took off and I left the X Factor tour behind. It upset me to think that we wouldn’t be friends any more. I still loved him so much – he was my link to one of the most important episodes in my life.