The troubling truth about Tulisa: New X Factor judge's father kept knife under bed in case mentally ill mother attacked them
By Jo Macfarlane
Last updated at 1:11 AM on 21st August 2011
Centre of attention: Tulisa made her X Factor debut last night
The eyes of the nation were on Tulisa Contostavlos last night when she made her eagerly-awaited debut as a judge on the new series of The X Factor.
The glamorous N-Dubz singer secured the prestigious role after months of speculation about the composition of the panel following the highly-publicised departures of Dannii Minogue and Cheryl Cole.
But behind the 23-year-old’s glossy new look – the flowing hair, dazzling frocks and freshly-veneered smile – lies a steely core, apparently honed by much hardship.
In a recent interview, her father Plato dismissed claims his daughter endured a troubled childhood and insisted hers was a comfortable upbringing backed by family wealth.
But now Tulisa’s former stepmother has spoken out to paint an altogether more disturbing picture.
Melanie Vondrau, 38, was married to Plato ¬during Tulisa’s transition from happy child to troubled teenager.
At the time, Tulisa was living with her mother Ann in a council flat in North London, after her parents separated because of pressures caused by Ann’s mental health problems.
The testimony of South African-born Melanie – who prefers to be known as Mel – often makes for uncomfortable reading and illustrates how far Tulisa, who has spoken movingly about acting as her mother’s primary carer from the age of 11, has come.
Mel, who met Plato in 1997 after answering an advert for a singer in his band Westbound, has fond memories of the young Tulisa. ‘She was a lovely little girl,’ Mel says. ‘I remember her telling jokes, mimicking members of her family. She was a happy-go-lucky character.
‘There didn’t seem to be any ill-feeling about me being in her father’s life. They were very close and she appeared happy to be around him, happy to be in his presence. You could see there was definitely a bond there – she adored her father. She was polite and well-mannered – very much so.’
By day, Mel worked as a legal secretary for the Government’s Treasury solicitors and in the evenings she sang with Plato and his brother Byron in pubs and clubs.
Their earnings from their £100-a-night sessions went towards building a recording suite in a rented attic of Jumbo Studios in Dollis Hill, where their singing competed with the Tube trains rattling along the tracks outside.
Plato and Mel began dating in the
summer of 1998. His opening gambit, which Mel found curious, was: ‘If you agreed to date me, and we dated for a year, would you marry me?’ It turned out to be prophetic.
During pizza dates and visits to his favourite carp-fishing spots, Plato began to open up about his marriage to troubled Ann.
‘He couldn’t cope with her breakdowns, which happened every summer,’ Mel says.
‘The straw that broke the camel’s back came when he found Ann trying to feed Tulisa raw eggs. Tulisa was sitting at the table saying, “Please, Mummy, don’t. They’re raw."
‘He used to sleep with a knife under the bed. He was frightened of Ann, convinced she was going to harm him and Tulisa. He didn’t elaborate.’
Keen to protect his daughter, Plato applied for joint custody. He persuaded Mel to move in with him in a rented flat in Queen’s Park, North-West London, and, in January 1999, marry him.
Painful memories: Tulisa's former stepmother Melanie, (right), says Plato (left), did not always do right by his daughter, despite his earlier claims
‘He put the squeeze on me and said it would help his cause to have a stable environment for Tulisa to come to every weekend. I felt I was being rushed into things, that there had been no time for the relationship to develop properly. I was only 25.
‘But my own father had been schizophrenic and I understood the effects of mental illness on a child. I went along with it, despite huge doubts.’ Mel remembers sobbing the night before the wedding, convinced she was being pressurised into moving too quickly.
Then, after they returned to the flat following the ceremony at Marylebone Register Office, Plato told her she would have to support him financially as he wasn’t ‘built for nine-to-five’.
She adds: ‘We didn’t go on honeymoon – I went straight back to work.’
‘What Plato deemed to be the best thing ever was to have a council flat. They were all entrenched in the benefits system. That was strange, because of where they’d come from. They were so used to having things handed to them on a plate, it suited them.’
A session musician, Plato made some money playing keyboards with the band Mungo Jerry, famous for their 1970 song In The Summertime, and working as a barber in Edgware, North London. But his income was erratic and Mel paid the rent and bills.
Mel was also irked that despite having plenty of money behind them – Plato was privately educated, his father Spiros was a diplomat and the family owned a five-bedroom house in West Hampstead along with a villa in Greece – the Contostavlos clan seemed to be obsessed with claiming benefits.
Mel said: ‘What Plato deemed to be the best thing ever was to have a council flat. They were all entrenched in the benefits system. That was strange, because of where they’d come from. They were so used to having things handed to them on a plate, it suited them.’
Plato let Ann and Tulisa continue living in the family’s council flat in the leafy enclave of Belsize Park, North-West London, which – although dated and with plastic garden furniture in the kitchen – was spotless and spacious. Despite his efforts, Plato was left devastated when his bid to win joint custody failed in traumatic circumstances.
‘Ann’s case hinged partially on allegations that Plato had been physically abusive to her. There was no truth in it, and he was interviewed by police and Tulisa was checked.
‘It was very damaging for them as a family. Plato was very stressed, very withdrawn. I asked him about it, obviously, but he said he’d never done anything to his daughter and I believed him – I still do. All I could do was support him at this point. He didn’t challenge the custody ruling.
Modest start: Tulisa at the family's modest council flat where she spent much of her childhood
‘And this came even though he’d insisted Tulisa was unsafe with her mother if she had a breakdown.’
They did not have long to wait for his fears to be vindicated. In the summer of 1999, Ann suffered an emotional breakdown. ‘Ann phoned us to say the devil was climbing up the walls,’ Mel says. ‘Tulisa was in the house with her, and my whole concern was trying to keep her calm and find out how Tulisa was. I could hear Tulisa crying in the background. I found that very disturbing.’
Shortly afterwards, the couple received a call from Social Services informing them she had been taken into the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead. ‘When we asked where Tulisa was, they couldn’t tell us. We were frantic and went to look for her, but then called the police.
‘It transpired Social Services had not taken Tulisa to a safe haven or informed her family she needed to be collected.
‘They’d simply left her on the steps of the flat and locked the front door, taking the keys with them. She was only ten years old and it was after dark, so she must have been terrified.
Holiday fun: Tulisa pictured in Wales in 2001
‘She walked to the local pub, the Haverstock Arms, and because the landlord knew her Aunt Louise, Ann’s sister, he called her.’
Tulisa stayed with Louise while her mother recovered. It was a very different young girl who arrived at Plato and Mel’s door a month later, when the former custody arrangements resumed.
‘She was not the happy-go-lucky girl
I’d met before,’ Mel says. ‘She had
experienced awful things. Plato always said her mother was ill, but then it hit home how ill she was.
‘It took her many months to come out of her shell. She wouldn’t talk about it. That was heartbreaking for a young child.’
With no experience of motherhood, Mel took Tulisa under her wing. Tulisa visited one weekend a fortnight, and Mel cooked her healthy food to counteract the endless takeaways and frozen pizzas she ate at home. There were trips to the zoo and a happy week spent in Wales. Tulisa loved the Spice Girls, then at the peak of their popularity, and had developed an interest in singing. Once, she asked Mel to teach her Laura Branigan’s hit song Gloria, which she sang to win a competition at Butlins during a family holiday.
Mel also found notebooks in which Tulisa wrote introspective lyrics based on her experiences with her mother. But the greatest shock came in Christmas 2000, when Tulisa was 12.
Scanning through a collage of family photographs Mel had made, Tulisa turned to her father and asked if he had wanted a son.
‘Plato stiffened and said. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve got my little girl,’’ ’ Mel says. The conversation triggered Mel’s memory. Previously, Plato had admitted to fathering a son in 1973, aged 13, after getting a 15-year-old neighbour pregnant.
‘I took him aside and said, “Have you told her about your son?” He said, “No,” ’ Mel recalls.
‘I said, “Have you had any contact with your son?” He said, “No, but my parents do. They know who he is and where he is.”
‘I was shocked. Plato doesn’t even know his name – he’s not interested. I asked him if it bothered him, but he insisted not. I found that very strange. Blood is blood.
‘This family professed to have strong values and this went completely against that. The mother’s parents were also diplomats and I think they moved to Germany when this happened. This was a no-no for Plato’s family – it was not good for their social standing.’
Tulisa’s behaviour, meanwhile, was slipping. She regularly disappeared from home without explanation and would call her family requesting a lift back from places such as Bristol.
Family Christmas: The singer cuddles up to her mother Ann in another family album snap
Mel also says pieces of her jewellery went missing, and Tulisa once admitted to losing an earring in a fight. Another time, Mel found her standing on the pavement with two other girls after midnight, clearly drunk. When she approached, Tulisa screamed at her, calling for help and claiming she was trying to kidnap her.
Yet Plato continued to dismiss Mel’s concerns about his daughter’s behaviour. ‘She was descending into this very dark place and her rebellion would lead her into frightening situations. But Plato was not concerned for her safety at all.
‘He said, “Oh well. It is what it is.” He blamed the courts. He said if they’d let him get custody, she wouldn’t be running around. It shook me. I did not want to have children with a man who could treat his own daughter like that.’
Distressingly, Tulisa confided she had once attacked her mother.
Rising star: Tulisa poses for the camera at the age of nine
‘We had a chat once in the car. I said to her it was terrible to watch her self-destruct. The attack on Ann was sheer frustration at her situation. She wouldn’t let us help her. She was very confused.
‘She had this father who was there but not there. He was always telling her he couldn’t afford to buy things for her.’
Yet the troubled teenager was given a lifeline when Plato and her uncle Byron encouraged Tulisa, along with her cousin Dappy and friend Fazer, to start a band, Lickle Rinsers, and they began recording.
It was a development that would bring Tulisa fame and fortune beyond her wildest dreams, but Mel remained concerned for her welfare.
‘Byron told her she was fat,’ she says. ‘She was only 13. He said no one wanted to see a fat person on stage. It was so inappropriate.’
Mel could not bear to stay to watch what had become a ‘train crash’ for the whole family, and she and Plato separated in 2001. However, realising it could be useful for Tulisa and keen to leave on the best possible terms, she left the studio equipment she had helped to fund, worth more than £100,000.
She last saw Tulisa when she was
a ‘pale and withdrawn’ 16-year-old, during a brief visit to Plato’s parents’ house.
The house has now been sold and the proceeds were divided between the four children. Plato and Byron each got £400,000, which they put towards making Lickle Rinsers, later to become N-Dubz, a success.
‘All that stuff about making them perform music to get them off the streets, I don’t think that’s the only reason. Byron and Plato also saw it as a way to make money,’ says Mel. ‘They were really struggling, no one was biting. Plato told me they bought their way into the charts, buying lots of copies of their single to bump it up. Plato had finally made good – put his hand in his pocket and given his daughter a break.’
Byron, Dappy’s father, died in 2007 before they achieved chart success. Mel says the stress killed him. Certainly, they had spent everything they had.
Sharp ascent: With bandmates Dappy and Fazer
Mel divorced Plato in 2008. Now married to a cameraman and living in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, with her four-year-old daughter Hannah-Jane, she knows nothing about the alleged seedier side of the band’s success.
Despite a young fanbase, the rise of N-Dubz has been marred by associations with knife crime, drug-taking and gangs.
In 2009, Tulisa’s then-boyfriend Adam Bailey was accused of stabbing a man in the stomach, but was later cleared of any involvement. Fellow bandmate Dappy, who was convicted of assault in 2008, has admitted taking drugs and sending death threats to a Radio 1 listener who criticised him.
When asked about Dappy, Mel will say only that he is a ‘character’.
Of Tulisa, however, she is hugely proud.
‘They’re kids from a fairly good background. I don’t know anything about what was going on behind the scenes. Whenever I saw them, they were nice young kids getting on with things.
‘Tulisa took her father’s financial assistance later on, though she got nothing early on. He loved her, but he did not provide for her as a father should.
‘Her mother cared for her brilliantly when she was well. With what little money her mum had, she nurtured her.
‘I think Tulisa will make it in America as a singer. I hope so.
‘For Plato’s last birthday, he said Tulisa put her hand in her pocket, brought out £20 and said, “There you go, Dad – knock yourself out.” She’d made it. That said it all, for me.’
A spokesman for the singer said Tulisa did not wish to make any comment.
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