Tulisa - The Biography

by Newkey-Burden, Chas

  As the public voted over the following 24 hours, it was hard for any of the acts and their respective mentors to feel confident. Of the remaining acts only Misha B and Amelia had previously been in the bottom two. Therefore, both were vulnerable to another sing-off positioning. However, both had been particularly strong on the night. Equally, while the ‘Irish vote’ had seemed to be firmly behind Janet, she had stumbled so badly during her first song that it was easy to imagine her falling. As for Little Mix, they seemed strong but had performed in the unfancied opening slot of the show. Also, while they could take pride that they had already lasted longer than any other girl band, they were also all too aware that such a trend-bucking run could end. Perhaps only Marcus had no specific cause for pessimism. Consequently, there was a particularly tense atmosphere at the results show on Sunday night. Tulisa appeared with the rest of the judges as usual. She looked sensational in a figure-hugging sheer black dress. Her beautiful curves were shown off to the full in the eye-catching outfit. This time she did not perform the arm salute, but only because her outfit had long sleeves which covered her tattoo. The two performing acts were X Factor graduate Olly Murs and Jessie J. During the latter’s post-song chat with Dermot she saluted the efforts of Tulisa, who she had assisted at the judges’ houses phase. Asked who she wanted to win she did not dodge the question as so many guests disappointingly do. Instead she proudly declared ‘Little Mix!’ much to Tulisa’s delight.

  There was even greater delight for Tulisa when the results of the public vote were revealed later in the show. The tension was almost unbearable as Little Mix remained on the stage after Dermot had put through Amelia and Marcus. With just one more automatic place remaining in the semi-final, all three remaining acts – Little Mix, Janet and Misha B – were staring at a place in the dreaded sing-offs. As Dermot paused before revealing the final act to go straight through, the tension on Tulisa’s face was clear. The crowd began to chant ‘Little Mix! Little Mix!’ Then Dermot announced Little Mix’s name and she and her band celebrated in style. Leaping and punching the air, their joy and passion made for an emotional sight. Their screams of disbelieving joy were also powerful. The following morning, one newspaper would focus bitchily on Tulisa’s celebration but for the moment she was simply lost in her joy, pride and relief. Soon, tears were flowing from her eyes. If anybody wanted a symbolic slice of evidence at how competitive Tulisa is and how seriously she took her role as a mentor, this was it. She and her ‘little muffins’ remained celebrating on the stage long after programme etiquette would dictate they should have left, to allow the sing-off to start. She was so proud.

  Afterwards, she told the Sun why she thought the band was so successfully bucking the trend of girl bands on the show. ‘Little Mix are sweet, cute and fresh,’ she said. ‘They’re not like N-Dubz. They are endearing. They don’t seem like the kind of girls who are going to nick your boyfriend. They’re the kind of girls whose shoulder you want to cry on.’ There would be more tears to come for Tulisa and her act. Happily, they would be tears of joy as she fulfilled her dream of becoming the first X Factor mentor to take a group all the way to the final. Naturally, the journey there would not be entirely smooth. This was Tulisa and The X Factor, after all.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Having taken Little Mix through to the semi-final and fended off the row about her ‘arm gesture’, Tulisa might have hoped that she could be out of the firing line for a while. Surely all the controversy was behind her? No chance: in the wake of the quarter-final weekend she was once more in the thick of things as the Misha B row was ignited yet again, this time by the contestant herself. ‘Why the whole thing was brought up was never really explained… they just went from being about the music to being about nonsense,’ Misha B told a newspaper. She went on to put the blame on her poor showing in the voting directly on the comments made by Tulisa and Walsh some weeks previously. ‘I know if I was watching the show and someone accused someone like they did without knowing the facts then that would make me change my mind on the person. I understand how people think and how as human beings they are heavily influenced by people’s comments. Of course it is going to damage my chances of winning the show,’ said Misha B. ‘It got blown so out of proportion and the judges weren’t there and jumped to conclusions.’

  As these reports again dragged Tulisa into the centre of the story despite Walsh’s comparatively harsher observations, she also woke up to jibes about her Sunday evening dress in the Daily Mail. TULISA HITS A BUM NOTE AS HER SHEER DRESS LEAVES LITTLE TO THE IMAGINATION ON X FACTOR, ran the headline. The story went on to explain how ‘under the bright studio lights’ her backside was visible when she jumped for joy celebrating Little Mix’s progression to the semi-finals. To give the story more foundation, it repeated a vow Tulisa had made the previous week to never pose nude in a magazine, however lucrative the offer. ‘I’d never get naked in a mag,’ she had said. ‘I don’t care how much money. You can offer me millions. I’m not a prostitute. I’m sorry, naked? That’s no diss to anyone who does it, but I’m a musician – I’m not selling my body.’ However, there was a growing army of male fans who would love her to peel off her clothes in a magazine. Her soaring popularity among the men of Britain could have made Fazer jealous. He took it as a compliment, however. ‘I love it that guys fancy her and want to get with her,’ he told Heat. ‘It’s far better than them saying, “Fazer, what the f*** are you doing with her?!”It’s good.’

  Tulisa, speaking in the same week to Glamour magazine, said she does have a possessive streak. ‘I get jealous,’ she said of her feelings for Fazer. ‘If he’s seeing his girl mates, I want to know them. I say, “What friend? You don’t need female friends. Why didn’t I know her before? Introduce me. Let’s go out for dinner”.’ She went on to describe how she considered herself to be as a girlfriend. A lot of the qualities she described were ones that many men would find hard to live with. At least, though, she was honest and frank when she said: ‘I don’t stand for any sh*te. I’m selfish. I’m very stubborn. I never back down and I’m possessive.’ If any of her words were causing alarm bells to ring in the minds of men who fancied her, she balanced these statements with descriptions of more admirable traits. ‘But I’m very accommodating,’ she continued. ‘If he has a problem we talk about what we can do to fix it.’ If she was coming across as a coin with two sides, that was intentional, as that is how she sees herself. ‘If you fight me, I’m a raging bull,’ she said, adding: ‘If you work with me, I’m good at that. And I’m very snugly.’ She gave the final word to Fazer, when she quoted his favourite assessment of her. ‘As he always says, one minute I’m a puppy dog, the next I’m the ice queen,’ she said.

  The jealous side which she alluded to in that interview had shown itself in October when she took to Twitter to launch a fuming online invective in response to a woman she felt had tried to be a little too friendly to her boyfriend. She wrote: ‘2all women! don’t mess with my man! I may b famous but I will still cum and whup ur ass if u underestimate me! don’t b disrespectful’ (sic). In a separate Tweet, she added: ‘MGW [money grabbing wh*re] women make me laugh, NO darlin not only is he not interested but he came straight back n told me LHFAO bout u, years ago it wuda been hot.’ After a period of silence, she returned to the site to say she was in a mood to ‘cause trouble’ and that she wanted to explain her previous ‘rant’. She wrote: ‘4 the record that rant was directed at a girl tryin it on with my fella who she knows is with me! WELL DESERVED’.

  Meanwhile Tulisa was beginning to look beyond The X Factor and was planning a well-earned winter getaway once her duties on the show were complete. The one place she said she would not be going to was Barbados, where Simon Cowell and other celebrities jet to most winters. ‘I wanna get away from all that but still go some place where I know someone ‘cos I hate going away and not knowing my way around,’ she told the Mirror. ‘Wherever I go there’s got to be beautiful scenery… and something to do.’ Ironically she would, as we sha
ll see, go to Barbados after all. Between shows she continued her partying ways. In addition to her regular jaunts at G.A.Y. she let her hair down at other venues, including the Jalouse nightclub in London, where she joined celebrations for rapper Chipmunk’s 21st birthday. Alongside her were several cast members of what she says is ‘her favourite television show of all time’, The Only Way Is Essex. Wearing a white mini dress with gold and silver embellishment and black patent heels, she danced, partied and drank the night away. The next morning she seemed to have second thoughts about her previous evening’s online activity, when she Tweeted: ‘I am deleting every tweet I sent last night simply cus I don’t remember sending them hahaha.’ Oh, to have seen the content of the Tweets in question before she deleted them.

  Meanwhile, discussion turned to which acts would duet with the X Factor finalists in the weekend of final shows. In the past such musical royalty as Robbie Williams, Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera and Rihanna had sung alongside individual finalists. The speculation over who would appear this time had already begun, with Coldplay rumoured to have been approached. When Little Mix was asked by a journalist who they most wanted to duet with should they reach the final, Perrie said: ‘Tulisa!’ It would be an X Factor first if a finalist were to duet with their mentor. Jesy added: ‘She is so passionate about us. We’re so close to her and I just love her to pieces.’ On the duet issue, it was believed that Tulisa was interested in such an arrangement but feared it might cause tension among the other judges.

  In any case, she reminded her act, they had to get through the semi-final and earn public vote to join the final line-up before any choice for a duet could be officially finalised. Having dampened their expectations one day she raised them the following day when she claimed that X Factor supremo Simon Cowell had told her that he predicted Little Mix would win the final. ‘He told me that he really liked the girls,’ she said. ‘He actually said he’s backing them to win.’ A vote of confidence from the genius behind the X Factor franchise – and whose presence in the UK shows was sorely missed – was a significant boost for Tulisa’s girl band. It was a boost that was probably needed, as a simultaneous story was published claiming that band member Perrie Edwards was dating One Direction boy Zayn Malik. Could such a rumour lead to the boy band’s famously fanatical following turning against Little Mix out of jealousy? Only weeks earlier Xtra Factor presenter Caroline Flack had witnessed how harsh such backlashes can be when she received death threats and a tidal wave of abuse after it was rumoured she had dated One Direction’s ever-popular Harry Styles.

  A less glamorous but in many ways more important development for Tulisa came in the shape of an award that recognised her contribution to awareness about mental health issues. She won a Media Award from the mental health charity Mind for the documentary Tulisa: My Mum And Me. She told the ceremony at the British Film Institute in London how proud she was. ‘Mental health issues are something that’s very close to my heart,’ she said. ‘Winning a Mind Media Award means so much to me, I’m blown away. It’s something that affects so many people and their families. I wanted My Mum And Me to show that no one should be ashamed to speak out about mental health issues.’ A rep from the production company praised Tulisa’s frankness. ‘Tulisa and all our contributors were so open about sharing their stories. It’s an honour to pay tribute to such strong, young and resilient carers and to bring to light just how hard they work to make day to day life more bearable for those they look after.’

  It was a mark of what an important public figure Tulisa was becoming that within the space of seven days she was so ubiquitous in the public eye and that her high profile came through several channels. As well as her ongoing X Factor position she was also in the charts with the N-Dubz Greatest Hits album, in the gossip magazines due to her celebrity coupling with Fazer, and also winning a prestigious award from a mental health charity. From an essentially frivolous reality television show through power-coupling and a leading urban band to charity worthiness, Tulisa was proving to be quite the versatile celebrity. With her branded perfume in the shops for Christmas and talk of a novel and solo career in 2012, she could not be accused of putting all her eggs in one basket.

  The semi-final weekend was truly eventful, as the 2011 X Factor series really sprang into life near the close. As in the previous week, each remaining act sang two songs: the first with a Motown theme, the second under the banner of ‘the song to get me into the final’. The stakes had never been higher. There to support Tulisa was one special fan: her mother Ann. Tulisa had revealed Ann’s presence at the studios on Twitter, earlier in the evening. She wrote: ‘Gettin ready 4 2nits show, mums in the dressing room with me givin me mummy support lol!Ive got butterflies! Fingers crossed 4#LITTLEMIX’. Forever the daughter playing the mother role, Tulisa was supporting her mother just when she might have expected to be the one receiving the support.

  Little Mix sang ‘You Keep Me Hangin’ On’ by The Supremes as their Motown song. The comments from Walsh and Rowland were positive, but Barlow’s feedback was more incisive. ‘Perrie is actually the best singer in this band,’ he stated. ‘I think she should be featured a lot more than she is. That’s what missing at the moment for me, a focus, a lead singer.’ Tulisa showed her disgust in her facial expressions, even before verbally responding to Barlow’s remarks. ‘What Little Mix represent are four different people who, when they come together, are four strong individuals,’ she said. ‘They love each other and want to give each other as much time on the record.’ For their ‘song to get them into the final’, Little Mix chose ‘If I Were A Boy’, by Beyoncé. The intensity of the moment was clear in the facial expressions of the band members. Their concentrated gazes and synchronised bobbing as they sang made for a moving performance. Walsh compared them to Girls Aloud, pointing out it was 10 years since that band had emerged after being assembled on Popstars: The Rivals. Rowland told them that if they could ‘find the strength within each other’ they would be able to ‘change the world’. Gary, though, was less impressed. He told them they were ‘not good enough tonight’.

  To say this lit the touch-paper in Tulisa’s mind would be an understatement. Finally unleashing her N-Dubz self on the show, she thumped the table hard as she pleaded for people to vote for Little Mix and continued thumping away as she roared that they ‘deserve to win the competition!’ It was an amazingly powerful outburst. Never in X Factor history had a judge shouted so loud for their act. Nor had there ever been any incident of such violent desk-thumping. Tulisa had raised eyebrows across the studio. She later had a bit of fun on Twitter, writing: ‘Wow! My hand hurts… Save our little muffins.’ The voters did just that, and Tulisa’s band was safely through to the final. Not only that, they went into the final as the favourites in the eyes of a significant number of viewers and commentators.

  In the wake of her historic achievement, Tulisa faced another onslaught of negative stories, the foundation of some of them spurious to say the least. First, the Daily Mail claimed that when Tulisa cried during Misha B’s farewell song that the tears had been motivated by guilt. Its headline screamed that she had fought back ‘tears of guilt’ as if this was fact. The story went on to claim: ‘Perhaps feeling guilty at her part in the Misha bullying scandal, Tulisa was seen weeping as she worked her way through the song.’ Perhaps, indeed – or perhaps not. More likely is that Tulisa was caught-up in all the emotions of the moment: pride and relief that her act had made the final, sadness at the exit of Misha B – an act that she admired musically and who of all in the competition had come most from her neck of the musical woods.

  As for Misha B, later that same day she confirmed that there was no remaining tension on her part when it came to Tulisa. Asked on Daybreak if she had forgiven Tulisa, she said: ‘Forgiving is the thing that I have done. I believe that in situations that occur in life, you shouldn’t get bitter you should just get better.’ The Mancunian added: ‘Because there’s a saying that to forgive is to set a prisoner free, and I realised that
prisoner was me. And instead of getting bitter about a situation – because it’s only making you not feel good inside. And for that situation I’m so grateful because it has been one of the greatest experiences of my life – for me to look at the situation and grow and learn from it. I’m just so grateful.’ That was by no means the only interview she gave in the 24 hours following her X Factor exit in which she was given the opportunity to blame her downfall on Tulisa. Given the undoubted massive talent she had, which had been clear for all to see from her first audition to her farewell song with its original rap lines, she was under pressure to provide a sound bite with which the media could explain why she was no longer in the competition. It was refreshing to see Misha B resist so many times the temptation to turn on Tulisa. She also, incidentally, resisted the opportunity to slam Barlow, who had told her on the Saturday show that the bullying claim meant she could not win the show. ‘I’ve got the utmost respect for Gary – I think he’s amazing,’ said Misha, who was showing admirable restraint as she was bombarded with leading questions. She added: ‘understand what he was saying.’ Asked who she wanted to win the show, she chose Little Mix, and spoke with glowing approval of Tulisa’s act. She said if they did not win she would like Marcus Collins to take the title. Anyone other than Amelia Lily, in other words?