Daring to Dream

S
pecial thanks to my mum Jackie, Craig’s mum and dad Sally and Eddie, and Craig’s brothers and their wives, Gavin and Sarah and Greg and Laura. They’ve been there for us throughout everything and Craig and I are incredibly grateful.

I also want to thank Sharon Osbourne because she’s a massive inspiration to me and I honestly don’t think I would have got as far if I didn’t have her as a mentor. Michael Bolton was also my secret mentor during the show and he’s like a spiritual guru to me. He’s given me a shoulder to cry on and been on the phone to me from LA whenever I’ve needed him.

My hometown of Leicester has also been incredible. People have been so lovely and Leicester City Football Club
have welcomed me with open arms. It’s such a pleasure and an honour to be a part of such a great institution.

I also want to give a special mention to a couple called Chris and Nigel Pitchfork who have followed my singing career for many years and have been a great support to me.

I want to thank
The X Factor
for giving me such an incredible opportunity and allowing me not just to change my life for the better, but also the lives of those closest to me. And, of course, my fans who have made all this possible: your dedication amazes me and you always know how to put a smile on my face.

Finally I want to thank my husband Craig and my kids Brooke, Tommy and Miley. None of this would have been possible without their incredible love and support. They are my absolute world.

‘
S
am.I.am’… that’s what I called you from the very start. From the moment you walked into the first audition room, stood in front of all of us and announced you were a prison officer, you had my attention. I asked you if your dream was to sing and you said ‘yes’ and then you completely stole my heart with your rendition of ‘Listen’ by Beyoncé. As you left that first audition I turned to the other judges and said ‘That’s our winner’ and they all agreed with me.

Sam, your strength, your voice and your transformation as the weeks went by was something to behold and was an honour for me to be a part of. Keep on living the dream. God bless, loves ya.

Mrs O

I
’m standing on stage in front of 10,000 screaming people and it feels like a million lights are pointing right at me. The sound of an incredibly loud heartbeat is pulsating around me and everything feels like it’s moving in slow motion. Suddenly Dermot O’Leary says something and I look to my left to see Sharon Osbourne collapsing onto the floor in tears. It takes a few seconds for the words to sink in but then it hits me. I’ve just won
The X Factor
.

I
came into the world on 29th June 1977 at Stone Park Maternity Hospital in Beckenham, south-east London. Because I had two older brothers, Danny and Charlie, my parents were expecting another boy to come along. So when I popped out my dad had to go and buy me a dress
straight-away
. They only had my brothers’ hand-me-downs and so Dad got me this tiny pink fluffy thing that I’ve still got in a box in my loft.

Mum says I was named after my uncle Sammy on her side, but my dad always said I was named after Samantha Stephens from the TV show
Bewitched
because he had a crush on her. That would be a very ‘my dad’ thing to do.

Mum said that dad treated me very differently to my brothers from the word go because he thought I was so much more delicate than they were as babies. Every time he
heard a murmur from my cot he’d run over and say to my mum, ‘What’s wrong with her?’ He was always panicking that I was going to get ill. Mum said he’d sit there and watch over me for hours and hours sometimes.

When I was first born we lived in a maisonette in Anerley Vale, Crystal Palace. With a new arrival and my brothers growing at a rapid rate we soon ran out of space, so my parents decided to move house, to Walnuts Road in Orpington, Kent. My first
real
memories are of living in that house. It was a council house that had the old green metal council fencing outside. When I was about three I used to play in the front garden with our big Afghan hound, Jaffa, and I remember it really clearly. She was so big she seemed more like a horse than a dog and of course I was always trying to climb up on her. I’ve always thought Jaffa was the reason my mum and dad didn’t have any more kids after me. She used to sleep in between them every night so there was no chance of them having any kind of hanky-panky!

One day a family knocked on our door and asked my mum if they could borrow our dog to breed her. Mum says now that they seemed really shifty, and of course she wasn’t about to let some total strangers walk off with our dog, so she told them where to go. A couple of weeks later two of the men came back while I was toddling around with Jaffa in the garden, picked her up and took her away right in front of my eyes. Of course I didn’t really understand what was going on, but I started screaming and ran inside to Mum.
That was the last time we ever saw Jaffa; she was found in a field some months later. Terribly, she’d been shot dead. We can only assume that the people who took her bred her and then decided they didn’t need her any more. It’s not the nicest memory to have and I’m still shocked people that horrible exist in the world.

Other early – and happier – memories I have are of walking across a footbridge to get to the Walnut Centre, which was my nursery. I always used to get really excited about going because they had such amazing toys. Mum worked for a company called Specac, which had a big factory nearby, and every day she’d drop me off and pick me up again. My dad was working as a painter and decorator at the time, and he was also a musician, so both of them were grafters.

When I was about six we moved again, this time to Lockesley Drive in St Mary Cray, Kent, and I had to start at a big new school called St Philomena’s. I’d missed the first year, so when I joined I didn’t know anyone and my classmates had already made friends and formed groups. A girl called Vicky Lovesey and I became friends and she’s still a friend of mine now. But sadly I wasn’t exactly inundated with friendship requests in my first year at school.

Back then I had a real problem with wetting myself. And not just wetting the bed – it could happen anytime. As a result I had to wear nappies to school just in case I had an accident (which was a frequent occurrence), so needless to say that instantly made me a target for bullies. I got called names and
laughed at, and I felt really ostracised. It was so horrible: I used to ask if I could stay in the classroom and write lines every break time just so I didn’t have to hang out with the other kids. The headmistress, Mrs Shelley-Pierce, was a lovely woman and I think she felt a bit sorry for me because at lunchtime she’d let me go into her office and sharpen pencils to save me from being hassled in the playground.

Vicky became my only friend and I used to get a lift to school with her and her mum every morning. We’d get dropped at the end of a lane and then walk the rest of the way, but as soon as we got into the school grounds she would ignore me. One day she turned to me, pointed to the end of the lane and said, ‘We’re only friends to here.’ She didn’t want to be seen with me in case the other kids turned on her too. We were only young and she probably doesn’t even remember it, and I am over it now – honestly! I know what children are like now I’ve got my own. They can be cruel and they don’t understand how much it affects someone when you pick on them. I totally forgive everyone who was unkind to me when I was younger because I had a problem. I
was
smelly, so I do understand why the other kids didn’t want to hang out with me. I probably would have avoided me too.

My parents tried
everything
to stop me wetting myself. I went to see a psychiatrist and all sorts. I even had a star chart where I’d get rewarded if I went an entire day without weeing myself, which was rare. I went to see one doctor who gave me a metal sheet to put on my bed (yes,
really
). The
idea was that every time I wet the bed an alarm would go off. It sounded like a loud bell and so woke up the whole house. My mum would come running in and say, ‘Quick, you need to go to the toilet!’ But by then I’d already gone, so I never really understood the point of it. Maybe it was to subconsciously shame me into not doing it any more? Well, it didn’t bloody work. It must have been incredibly frustrating for my parents and I used to get so embarrassed.

When I got to the age of eight I started trying to fit in at school by playing the class clown. One day I went to the toilet – I was the only person who was allowed to go whenever they wanted, for obvious reasons – and I decided to have a bit of a laugh and impress my classmates. There was a high window that looked onto my class, so I climbed up to it by clambering on the coat hooks and putting my foot into the pocket of this boy called Gerald’s duffle coat to keep me steady. I started to do a ‘V’ sign at the window but then I heard this ripping sound and realised I’d ripped Gerald’s pocket quite badly. I went back to the classroom and didn’t say a word, but when the teacher found out about the damage she demanded someone own up to it. I kept quiet and the next thing I knew our teacher had called the police in. Only of course it was someone’s dad who happened to be a police officer. He carried out an ‘investigation’, which eventually led back to me and I had to own up. Gerald’s mum came round to my house clutching the coat and made my parents pay for it. I felt
awful and I remember thinking, ‘Look where trying to be funny and fit in has got you.’

Something else that got me into trouble at school was my dad’s band. We all had to write an English essay about our family, and then go up to the front of the class and read them out. Our teacher didn’t check them first, so I announced to the entire class that my dad was the drummer in a band called
Sex With Strangers
, obviously having no idea what it actually meant. I thought my teacher was going to have a heart attack and he quickly sent a letter home to my parents – but my dad found it hilarious!

The one thing that saved me at school was sport. I became really good at football and cross-country running because it gave me a way to escape. Until then I’d been really lazy and I was still being wheeled around in one of those really old-fashioned deckchair pushchairs because I refused to walk anywhere. Yes, even at the age of eight. Sport gave me purpose and focus and, because I was good at it, a bit more confidence; it was also a relief for my mum who was sick of wheeling me around in that pushchair!

Cross-country was a real release because it meant that I could be totally on my own and think. I lived with constant noise around me at home – either my dad would be playing loud music or my brothers would be kicking the ‘living daylights’ out of each other – so that was the one time I could be away from everything. It was my only way of experiencing true silence.

I joined the Brownies for a while, but we were all told to write a pretend pen pal letter to someone else in the group and I didn’t realise the Brownie leaders were going to read them, so I put loads of swear words in mine. I wasn’t exactly upset when they said I couldn’t go back. I didn’t like having to wear a skirt and a stupid sash anyway. I was never going to be the girl who was good at gymnastics, either. I was far from graceful, but if you gave me a football I could play for hours. There was a lad on my football team back then called Michael Delaney, who has got his own football academy now. He’s taught people like Cristiano Ronaldo and David Beckham how to do incredible tricks for TV adverts. He choreographs the routines and he’s an amazing footballer. I used to watch what he did and copy him, and I picked up a lot of good skills even at that age.

I think mum was keen to try and stop me from being permanently muddy, so she signed me up for dance classes. But obviously me wearing a leotard and tights with my toilet issue wasn’t the best idea in the world. I was still really suffering and if I had an incident there was no hiding it. I used to go to classes on Orpington High Street and it was right near where my mum had started working in a greasy spoon called The Golden Egg. I’d go into the cafe after class and have egg and chips and I loved it. It was always a real treat for me, and it almost made going to dance classes worth it.

I was a really fussy eater when I was young, and to a certain
extent I still am now. At dinner times I always used to make sure I had this giant plastic cup with a lid that I’d got from a theme park. I’d drink all of my drink really quickly and then hide any food I didn’t like inside it. As soon as we were allowed down from the table I’d go out into the garden and feed it all to our neighbours’ Alsatian, Sheba. If it looked like I’d finished all of my mains, I could have a mousse or a donut for pudding, which were my favourites. I only really liked sweet things and I didn’t eat much, so I was a tiny child, very slim and small for my age. I was also quite headstrong.

When I was six I had a huge argument with my mum and told her I was leaving home. She packed me a bag and waved me off, and to test me she let me walk all the way up the road. When I got to the top I sat there for about 20 minutes to make her think I’d really gone. She could still see me from the upstairs window so she let me stew, and in the end I stormed back home, said, ‘I’ve got to stay now, I’ve forgotten something’, and stomped up to my room. I had a really determined nature and I hated people getting the better of me.

Mum always knew how to play me but I got away with murder with my dad. I was the apple of his eye. He had these amazing mahogany speakers in our living room that he was so proud of and there was always music blaring out of them. It was usually a band called Budgie, who my dad knew, or Fleetwood Mac or Queen. Even now if I hear any of the songs that were played back then I don’t just hear the
song. I hear people shouting over the top of it and my dad talking and laughing and it takes me straight back to my front room filled with about 20 of my parents’ friends.

One day my brothers were winding me up as usual and I was holding a ginger nut biscuit, which I threw at Danny. He dodged out of the way and it hit one of the speakers and dented it. We all gasped and when my dad came running in, even though it was my fault, it was my brothers who got the telling off because they’d been goading me. I could do no wrong as far as he was concerned.

Dad’s love of music definitely rubbed off on me, although I have to shamefully admit that the first song I ever bought was ‘We All stand Together’ by Paul McCartney and the Frog Chorus. My brothers and I went into town with our pocket money one Saturday and Charlie bought Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’ and Danny bought ‘When The Going Gets Tough’ by Billy Ocean. We used to play those three songs over and over again in my brothers’ bedroom. My single wasn’t allowed to be played as much because the boys found it annoying, and I remember being so upset when I found a couple of giant scratches on it, which I’m pretty sure were done on purpose.

I adored my family but I did used to feel quite lonely as a child due to my lack of friends. I used to buy sweets on the way to school just so I could give them out to everyone that was unkind to me in the hope they might like me. I used to get invited to a lot of kids’ parties, but only because the
mums used to invite every child in my class. I never wanted to go because I knew the birthday girl or boy probably didn’t want me there, but my mum insisted on sending me off in these really awful girlie dresses. She’d come and pick me up and I’d be up a tree with the lads throwing conkers at the girls. Maybe it wasn’t that much of a surprise that the girls didn’t warm to me?

My brothers’ mates were always coming round, so I guess I got used to hanging out with lots of lads really early on, and I think that really shaped me. I was much more comfortable around boys than girls because at least they were upfront about everything and spoke their minds. The girls at school would be nice to my face and then laugh at me behind my back, and I found that so much more upsetting than someone calling me a stupid name.

Danny’s best mate was a guy called Stephen Cameron, who was lovely. He was one of the few lads who was always friendly and made time for me when we were growing up. Sadly, many years later, when he was 21, he was involved in a high-profile road rage incident, which resulted in him being murdered by a guy called Kenneth Noye. I remember it being all over the news at the time and it seems so surreal to think that was the same little boy who used to come round to ours all the time for dinner.

When I got a bit older my brothers turned into horrible pre-teens who no longer thought their little sister was cute and so started calling me Piss Flaps due to my little
‘problem’. But to be fair, I was just as horrible to them. My brother Charlie, who is four years older than me, had really bad acne so we all used to call him Pizza Face, and Danny, who is three years older, had one ear that stuck out so we’d nicknamed him Wingnut. We weren’t shy about taking the mickey out of each other in our house.