By Louise Eccles
Last updated at 2:24 AM on 6th June 2011
The carefully-crafted ‘wild girl’ image of X Factor judge Tulisa Contostavlos was called into doubt yesterday – by none other than her father.
The 22-year-old has gone into great detail about her teenage days with a violent gang and has sung about living ‘in the slum’ with her band N-Dubz.
In fact, says her father Plato, she grew up in a desirable neighbourhood, enjoyed foreign holidays and was showered with gifts by her wealthy Greek grandparents.
Bad girl? Tulisa Contostavlos had a charmed childhood, insists her father, Plato
The ‘tiny one-bedroom flat’ where she claims to have been raised was a spacious £500,000 apartment in the sought-after North London district of Belsize Park – home to stars such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Helena Bonham Carter.
According to 52-year-old Mr Contostavlos, she would often visit her grandmother and grandfather, a retired diplomat with the United Nations, in their pink marble nine-bedroom villa in Greece a couple of streets away from the Onassis family.
Mr Contostavlos, a keyboard player with the band Mungo Jerry, says he remains close to his daughter despite splitting from her mother Ann 12 years ago.
‘I am so proud of Tulisa, but it frustrates me to see her painted as a bad girl because as a child she was spoilt rotten and had everything she wanted,’ he said.
Tulisa along with other members of N-Dubz, from left to right, Richard 'Fazer' Rawson and Dino 'Dappy' Contostavlos
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‘I don’t know where this image of her being from the “ghetto” comes from. It’s not the Tulisa I know. She is a well brought-up girl who had a comfortable childhood. She had some friends from tougher backgrounds, but that is what London is like.’
It is a far cry from the tough image which Tulisa has cultivated – her band’s autobiography is called Against All Odds: From Street Life to Chart Life. In it she tells how, aged 15, she joined an ‘aggressive gang of chicks out to cause mayhem’.
She writes: ‘We would go around starting on people for no reason, having big fights with groups of girls from other areas. I remember there being a lot of weapons about too.’
According to Mr Contostavlos, his daughter enjoyed designer clothes and extravagant birthday presents from an early age.
Her grandfather also offered to pay for Tulisa to attend private school but, instead, she went to the state school previously attended by Ed Miliband.
Mr Contostavlos told the Mail on Sunday: ‘From the age of seven all she wanted for her birthday was cash.’
Tulisa’s ‘rags-to-riches’ tale has echoes of her X Factor predecessor Cheryl Cole, who endeared herself to the nation with her accounts of rising from a drug-ravaged council estate in Newcastle and becoming a member of the pop group Girls Aloud.
Yesterday Mrs Cole was said to be considering an offer to return to the judging panel on the U.S. version of The X Factor only days after being fired.
But friends said: ‘If she goes back, she feels some will say she’s been part of the greatest PR stunt in history.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1394688/Tulisas-pampered-childhood-Her-teenage-days-violent-gang-slum-fiction-says-father.html#ixzz1OSHNpoby
