Rebecca Ferguson: Meet the X Factor runner-up who's second to none
By Jane Gordon
Last updated at 8:00 PM on 26th November 2011
Despite coming second on last year’s X Factor, Rebecca Ferguson got the record company vote, with her world-class voice earning her a staggering £1 million deal. So how’s the modest single mother from Liverpool coping with fame and fortune? As she tells Jane Gordon, just realising her dream to be a professional singer is good enough for her – although she is enjoying the YSL boots…
'I think my voice is a gift - when you are given that gift and achieve success because of it, you've got to give back,' says Rebecca
There is nothing remotely second best about Rebecca Ferguson. In fact, the 25-year-old singer from Liverpool who was runner-up in last year’s X Factor has already proved, ahead of the release of her debut album Heaven next month, that she’s the real winner. Music industry insiders are saying that she has the voice and the potential to be the ‘most successful X Factor contestant ever’ and the fight to secure her music publishing rights is said to have sparked a £1 million bidding war (Matt Cardle, voted into first place ahead of her, is rumoured to have signed a publishing deal for just £300,000).
Rebecca – known to her friends as Becca or just Beccs – would never say it (she says Matt is a ‘lovely, lovely fellow’), but in truth she was always the one to watch and the only contestant who had a voice that the judges defined as ‘world class’. Gentle, softly spoken and modest, she doesn’t for a second regret that she wasn’t the outright winner of the show…she is just grateful that she is realising her lifelong ambition to be a professional singer after a surprisingly difficult struggle to get her beautiful voice heard.
‘I believe things are meant to be. It’s the only way I can explain it because I had auditioned before to get on The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent and I didn’t get through – it was literally,
“No!” I was also invited to audition for P Diddy’s Starmaker show in New York in 2007 – spending money I didn’t really have – and I was rejected there, too, and that made me finally rethink my life,’ she reminisces. ‘I remember sitting on a bench in New York and sobbing and realising that my ambition to be a singer was making me selfish – I was a mother with two children and I needed a backup plan.’
So, although Rebecca didn’t entirely give up on her first ambition, she went to college to study to become a legal secretary and discovered that she had an aptitude and a passion for human rights law, eventually gaining distinctions in all her exams.
From left: Rebecca with her X Factor mentor Cheryl Cole; performing with guest star Christina Aguilera on X Factor, 2010; shopping with her children in Liverpool last August
‘Discovering that there was another option in life gave me a whole different attitude and when I auditioned for last year’s X Factor I thought if it’s meant to be, fine, and if not I will go off and become a solicitor. And with that attitude I got a yes!’ she says, smiling at the memory.
Although things have never been exactly easy for Rebecca, she has no complaints and is loath to turn her life history into a sob story (despite – she is now embarrassed to recall – having cried in her pre-audition X Factor interview). Raised by her mother Anne Jameson, now 53, after her father Dan left, Rebecca has two brothers, Daniel, 26, and Sam, 22, as well as a half-brother, Adam, 31, and two 12-year-old half-sisters, Imani, from her mother, and Natalie, from her father. There was, she says, never enough money but always more than enough love, and she is full of admiration for the way in which her gentle mother, who suffers from depression and is classed as disabled, brought the family up.
‘What I hated then – and hate now – is the way that people say to girls like me who get pregnant young that it ruins your life. Having a child doesn’t ruin your life…having a child is a blessing’
‘My mum is a lovely woman, so strong but so kind and compassionate. She brought us up to be proud, loving and forgiving,’ she says.
Confident and outgoing, Rebecca determined from an early age that she would become a singer, and at 15 she became a full-time student at Liverpool’s Starlite School of Performing Arts. But two years later she suffered the first setback to her ambition when she became pregnant.
‘What I hated then – and hate now – is the way that people say to girls like me who get pregnant young that it ruins your life. Having a child doesn’t ruin your life – having a child is a blessing. It was hard, and I recognise that I was lucky to live in a country where we have good tools in place to help girls who have babies at the age I did. But there is a stigma and the trouble is that when people say to you, “Oh, your life is over now,” you do start to believe them.’
She and her boyfriend Karl moved in together to raise Lillie May, now seven, and although Karl was (and remains) supportive, Rebecca suffered from postnatal depression.
‘We were so young. We were two 18-year-olds playing house with a baby. Karl and I laugh about those days now. It was hard, but we were really nice parents,’ she says with a grin that brightens up her often serious but always lovely face.
Karl and Rebecca split up shortly after the birth of their second child, Karl Junior, now five, but he and his family are very much involved in the children’s upbringing. Rebecca’s success on The X Factor and her working schedule – she has been writing and recording the material, mainly soul and love songs, for her album for ten hours a day since March – has made it necessary for her to relocate to a rented house in Surrey, where the children live during the week, returning each weekend to Liverpool to see their father.
There is no doubt that The X Factor has transformed Rebecca’s life. She has been watching this year’s show – picking out Craig as a current favourite because she feels he ‘connects most with the songs’ – with a touch of nostalgia for her own experience. Being with the same group of people from auditions through to the end of the post-show tour in March this year has given them a long-term bond. They are all her friends, she says, but those she mentions most are Aiden, Paije, Katie and Cher (Wagner, she says, made her laugh the most and Mary was everyone’s confidante).
‘After the show was over and we went on the tour we became like brothers and sisters because the element of competition was taken away. I will never forget the day when we did the final show of the tour – it was so sad because we all knew it was the end, that we had to go back to our normal lives,’ she says a little ruefully.
During the tour, Rebecca became involved with 18-year-old One Direction member Zayn Malik, breaking up in July because, it was claimed, of their mutual need to focus on their musical careers. Today she is reluctant to comment except to say that she ‘wishes Zayn well’ and to protest at the way in which she was labelled as a cougar (‘I was only 24’).
Now totally focused on her children, ‘who always did and always will come first’, and her music, she admits that she has had a few ‘offers’ of dates from several ‘famous-ish’ names (she won’t say who).
‘I have just said no because it would be a distraction and when I fall, I fall hard and I recognise that. I think to myself, well maybe in January after the album has been launched it could be yes, and if he really likes me, he’ll still be around.’
There is a dream – some way in the future – that she will meet a man and marry and eventually have more children because ‘I would like to do it the other way round and I love children’. She is, I suggest, a great role model for young mothers.
‘I know every mum says this, but I can’t imagine life without my children, they are amazing. And if anything, having my children didn’t ruin my life – it gave me the reason to work harder. I can honestly say that I wouldn’t be where I am now if I didn’t have children – they ground you and humble you,’ she says with an embarrassed smile.
A natural beauty, Rebecca has a classic old-school style that perfectly matches her haunting, soulful and slightly retro voice. She loves clothes and looks great – today she is wearing J Brand jeans matched with a top and a hat she bought in Debenhams – but is resistant to changing her body shape to fit with the worrying celebrity size-zero trend.
‘I was looking at a celebrity magazine the other day and everyone was so super-tiny and I thought, “Oh, I am going to have to lose weight”, and then I stopped and thought, “No, I don’t, I eat a balanced diet and I am a woman who has had two children – I’m normal.” Being very skinny is not normal,’ she says.
Careful with money, but not in the slightest bit materialistic, Rebecca says she has ‘lived poor’ and still been happy, and although she has enjoyed splashing out on a few things (the YSL boots she is wearing today, for example, and the novelty beds she has bought for her children) it wouldn’t bother her if she had to ‘live poor’ again.
‘I think my voice is a gift – I was born with it, I didn’t have to earn it and I think when you are given that gift and you achieve success because of it you’ve got to give back. If I do have the success that people are predicting then I would like to use any influence or power I might have to do something to help people. I really admire Angelina Jolie – she is a prime example of using her influence
to make a positive change for other people,’ she says.
For now, though, Rebecca is relishing her glamorous new life, meeting and working with people who, just a year ago, were her idols. Naturally nervous about how her album will be received, and reluctant to believe the ecstatic early industry reviews, she is determined that fame and success
will not change her.
‘But I do worry that when I am in London going to these glamorous events and meeting all these people, I might find myself living in a bubble where all you are thinking about is yourself. My manager said to me today, “Are you going back to Liverpool this weekend?” and I said, “I need to because going home keeps me grounded.”
‘There is nothing better than just going home and sitting there with my best friend, ordering a takeaway and watching The X Factor with a mug of wine – rather than a glass,’ she says. ‘You know, just being normal; not being Rebecca Ferguson, just being Beccs.’
Rebecca’s single ‘Nothing’s Real But Love’ will be released tomorrow and her album Heaven on 5 December
REBECCA'S LOVING ...
On my iPod I have a very eclectic taste in music. At the moment I have Lisa Gerrard [left], soul, rap and dance — no particular genre, just what’s good.
iPad app Cake Doodle [baking for children] — Lillie is always on it.
Style Icon Jackie Kennedy Onassis [left]. I’m really old school.
Shops Selfridges and Zara.
Can’t leave home without… YSL Baby Doll perfume — it reminds me of being young.
Saving up for A house for the children and for the chance to one day do something for charity,
to go to places where there is suffering and help.
Prized beauty product Crème de la Mer moisturiser — I have a little eczema on my eyelids and it has really helped.
Most-loved film Beaches — when I was younger I would pretend that I was Bette Midler’s character, C C Bloom, and my best friend Rebecca was Hillary Whitney Essex, played by Barbara Hershey.
Top TV programme The X Factor, naturally, The Jonathan Ross Show and I love Alan Carr’s Chatty Man.
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