Living Life the Essex Way (11 page)

I also do a lot of PAs – public appearances – where businesses such as shops and nightclubs pay me to come and spend time at their venue. I usually have to pose for photos, or sign
autographs for fans, or be interviewed on stage – whatever they think is of interest to their customers. This can be well paid – I can earn several thousand pounds just for an hour or
two of work. Pretty nice!

PAs can be quite exhausting because they are all over the country, and when I do nightclub appearances I don’t arrive at the venue until midnight or later. I try to take some friends and
make a night of it, staying on for a few drinks and a dance, but sometimes – if it is last-minute, or late on a work night, or really far away from Essex – and I can’t rope any of
my friends in, I end up going on my own.

Although generally people are positive, it can be quite daunting sometimes, and you never know how people will react to you, especially when you go to student nights and people have had quite a
lot to drink. This is the main reason why I have a tour manager who comes along with me. He is called Ian and he works for a company called Peace of Mind Services, which is pretty much what he
gives me! He is partly my driver, to get me to the venue on time and give me a chance to sleep on the way back, but he also does my security for me. He is a big, muscly guy, so not many people give
me hassle when he is around, and it is reassuring to have him there.

I remember once being at a PA with Harry in a bar in Bristol. It was a vile place – the floor was sticky, I was scared to even set my bag on the sofa and it was full of hillbillies –
you know the kind of place! Harry was on stage doing a Q and A, and this group of lads was yelling over the top of him. Poor Harry was trying to talk, but all you could hear was them going
‘Who are ya?’ over and over again. I got really annoyed, so I stormed on, grabbed the mic and said, ‘Don’t be jel, be reem!’ and everyone else started cheering. I
always think people who react like that are just jealous people who want a bit of our lives. And true enough, afterwards when we were doing photos, the boys queued up to get their pictures taken
with us.

People are generally positive though, and we only get this kind of negativity at about one in ten PAs. You just deal with it. Often it is just people who have had a lot to drink and get rowdy or
over-friendly, trying to hug me all the time. But that is what Ian is there for. Ian doesn’t come along when I have a normal night out with friends though, and sometimes I wish he did.

We had a horrible night during series three, when a gang of people attacked me and Billie, leaving me in hospital. It was covered a lot in the papers at the time, and really shocked both of us.
It made us so conscious of the downsides of being well known.

We were at a club called Jet Black in London and a group of girls started on Billie. There was an argument, then one girl hit me, and I instinctively lashed back at her. Luckily the bouncers saw
the incident and threw them out.

In all the pushing though, Billie got dragged out with them, and the argument continued. Billie was punched in the face and ended up with a split lip. It was so shocking. We found out later that
this bit of the attack was filmed on someone’s phone, and it went on YouTube the next day. Poor Billie watched it back a couple of times, and got upset all over again. But in a way it was
good it was filmed, as it was proof of what they had done, and showed just how shocking their behaviour was.

Later that night, I was attacked by the same group of people. My friend Charlotte called an ambulance and I was rushed to hospital. My eyes apparently rolled back in my head, and my brain had
swollen because of the beating. I needed a brain scan, and was covered in bruises and scratches. I had two black eyes and had lost a lot of hair.

I was in agony for a week or two after, and was so upset. I just sat at home and cried, and tried to work out why it had happened. I think these girls were motivated by jealousy of our fame and
how successful we were because of the show. I don’t think they would have behaved like that if we had just been ordinary girls on a night out. In a way it was good that Billie and I went
through it together, as we could talk about it and relate to each other.

It still makes me angry thinking about it now, that a group of girls could do that to another person. They were like a pack of animals, and that is scary. For a while we debated taking security
around with us all the time, but that just seems so extreme. I want to be able to live a normal life, without worrying that bad things could happen anywhere I go. So in the end we decided to just
learn from it, and avoid any clubs where we might not feel safe, but other than that, we would use our security just for events we were hired to attend.

Billie and I reported the gang to the police, and they took our statements and photographed our injuries. The case is still open pending enquiries as I write this at the beginning of 2012.

It was such a horrible experience, and was reported in newspapers and magazines, even making the cover of a lot of them. The upside of what happened was the response we got. It was amazing how
many people cared – from our true friends, to fans who put notes of support through our doors, to people we had worked with in the past who sent huge bunches of flowers. There was also huge
online support too – the number of my Twitter followers went up by 45,000 in the few days following the attack. How crazy is that? I am sure some of them were just being morbidly curious, but
I think most people were genuinely concerned, and I got so many amazing tweets.

I have had to develop a thick skin when it comes to Twitter, I have to say. Don’t get me wrong – like PAs, the majority of it is positive. I’d say that for every negative
tweet, I get 50 positive ones, and generally people message me about my outfits, or to ask for advice, or to give me support, but sometimes people can be really nasty and small-minded.

I took a lot of abuse for dumping Joey. You’d think I’d committed mass murder or something, judging by some of the comments! At first it really upset me and I started to doubt
whether I’d done the right thing, but then I realised that I have put myself out there to be judged because of the show, and I need to see the bigger picture. Most people have dumped someone,
so it’s really not that they thought what I had done was so terrible. They just wanted to get a rise out of me. Things like that don’t bother me so much now – I just block the
people who make nasty comments! One thing fame has taught me is to become more thick-skinned.

Despite all this though, the worst thing for me by a mile that has come about because of my fame has not been the physical or verbal attacks, but the coverage about my family. On that front, two
stories appeared in the press that I wish more than anything had not.

One was about Dave Chatwood, who has looked after me and Billie since I was two, and in every way other than biologically is my true dad. I can’t go into detail about things here, but the
fact is that Dave has been the most amazing dad. He has always treated us exactly as if we were his biological kids, and his priority has always been to look after Mum and Billie and me, always
trying to give us the best.

The other difficult story involving my family that I have had to deal with was about my biological father, Lee, and claimed that he had attacked his girlfriend, Fay Simmons, in June 2011 and had
been convicted of assault. For me, what Lee did was really bad. Beating up a woman is just horrible and you can never justify it.

Mum grew up in Hornchurch in Essex, and married Lee when she was 20 and he was a few years older. From what she has told me, he was very handsome, in a kind of tanned, almost gypsy-like way. He
was full of energy and fun, into activities like water skiing, and he lived on a farm where he rode horses. He was wild and loved living life on the edge, which I guess Mum was really attracted to.
I like bad boys as well, so I can see where she was coming from!

I’m not sure what caused things to go wrong, but from what Mum has said, it sounds like Lee was really jealous. Apparently he would just go mad, like he would go off on one at her about
her friends, as though his jealousy had taken over. When Billie was around one and I was a baby, and Mum took us to the shop . . . well, you aren’t going to get around Tesco quickly are you?
But after an hour and a half, she would get home and Lee would be going mad. He would hit and kick Mum, once so badly he broke her coccyx bone – the one at the bottom of your back. She had to
go to hospital and pretend she’d had a water-skiing accident. Other times he would half strangle or suffocate her, and the police would be called by worried neighbours. He would never go for
me and Billie on purpose, but one time Mum was holding me and he threw a spanner at her. Apparently it missed my head by about a centimetre. He was just clearly a violent nasty piece of work.

Mum is a very strong woman, and she was worried about him being a danger to us, but part of her still loved him, and she kept thinking he would get help. My granddad, Chris, Mum’s dad, who
lives in Brentwood, worked out what was happening, and he stepped in and convinced her to leave. It was a big family drama, but everyone was there to support Mum and she knew she needed to get us
all away from him. I know she asks herself now why she didn’t leave sooner – she has always told me and Billie, ‘If a man hits you even once, you leave. No second
chances.’

Mum got divorced from Lee, and while she had no contact with him herself, she didn’t try to stop us from seeing him, so his mum, Nanny Wendy, would take us for visits. Nanny Wendy is
amazing. She really tried to make sure we kept up a relationship with our dad, and to be honest, a lot of the time we would go and see him just for her. She called me and Billie her ‘Miss
Worlds’ and has always treated us so well. Her relationship with us is really strong – she has also remained close to Mum – and she flew in from Spain for my 21st birthday party
last year. We love Nanny Wendy!

Billie and I haven’t really had contact with Lee for years now though. As far as I am concerned, he was violent to our mum, so I don’t want to know him, and I will never forgive him
for what he did. It is a shame things didn’t work out for him in a family sense, but ultimately I am not interested. That is probably horrible for him to hear, but really he chose to do what
he did.

Don’t get me wrong, I want him to be happy in life, and I think he has some good qualities – he can be funny – but I don’t need to see him. Dave is our dad; Lee failed as
our dad. He never helped Mum financially or emotionally. Dad did that.

Lee has gone on to have three more kids by three different women, so Billie and I have two half-brothers called Beau and Harry and a half-sister called Ruby. I do have a bit of contact with
them, but they are not really part of our lives. I hope that one day, when we aren’t so busy, we can be more involved with them.

What upsets me about Lee though is that he didn’t learn from his early mistakes. Of course, it makes me sad, and it is hard that my relationship with him is now out there for everyone to
read about, but like everything in life, it has just made me tougher and more able to tackle life in general.

Anyway, enough about the negatives . . . and on with the positives!

Essex fashion is amazing. You won’t find anyone else who puts in the effort and thought that Essex girls do, and you definitely won’t find anyone who looks better.
We have had a lot of grief over the years for our fashion sense, but I reckon that is just coming from people who are jel of the Essex look, or who have no fashion sense themselves. The idea that
we totter around in white stilettos and short dresses and have no sense of taste or class is out of order, and just plain wrong.

We have definitely developed our own sense of style. We like things to be bigger, bolder and better. We also like to take a fashion and go for it 100 per cent. No half measures for us! We like
to make an effort, and are happy for people to realise we have. What’s the point in trying to do things so subtly that people don’t even think you have tried? What a waste of time!

Obviously fashion is ever changing, but there are two rules to getting it right Essex-style, that always work. Firstly, clothes must be classy, sexy and glam. Secondly, remember that high heels
usually look best. Of course there is a time and a place for pumps or Ugg boots, but these are the rules when you are going on a night out, or are really aiming to look your best. Then it is all
about the heels – and the higher the better. No compromises! And no, I don’t mean white stilettos – unless they go with the outfit obviously!

I have always been really into fashion, even when I was a little girl. Wearing something that makes me look and feel good has always been well important to me, and I have always loved trying out
new colours and styles.

When I was really young, I was a real girly girl. My mum would dress me up in little dresses and skirts, and I’d walk around feeling like a little princess. I also loved fancy dress
– my favourite was Snow White, although I also wanted to look like anyone who was on the Nickelodeon channel at the time. Everyone from the Olsen twins to Sabrina the Teenage Witch were like
my fashion icons. I also had a long gypsy skirt that I thought looked like it was one of Mary Poppins’ – hardly a fashion icon, was she, but I loved it.

My favourite shop was Tammy Girl. I loved all the glitz and the glitter – it seems all you have to do to make a little girl want certain clothes is make them sparkly!

Looking back, Tammy Girl was pretty tacky really, but we loved all the matching outfits, and I remember that fashion for wearing skirts over trousers. Whenever Billie and I were going to a party
at someone’s house when we were at primary school, Mum would be like ‘OK, girls, time to visit Tammy Girl’ and we’d be so excited. Even then we thought fashion and
clothes-shopping was amazing.

I remember once we had a fancy-dress day at school – I guess I was about six or seven at the time – where you had to come as a music idol. Billie was Cher, Amy Childs was one of the
girls from Abba, and for some reason Mum decided it would be a good idea for me to go as Dolly Parton. I wore a wig, my face was all powdered and made-up, and I had fake boobs made out of tissue
stuffed under my vest top. Oh my God, I swear I looked like I had walked straight off one of those American beauty pageants. It was so funny, and I loved it – I remember that day clearly,
even though I was so young. All the boys were like ‘Sam has boobs!’ and suddenly they all wanted to claim I was their girlfriend. It was an early taste of how lads are, I guess –
even at that age! It’s funny though, how things have changed – if a mum sent their kid to school like that now, they’d probably be told off for it, but back then it all seemed so
innocent. I had great fun!