Alexandra Burke I can’t take any more, mentally
Hurt by accusations of diva behaviour, Alexandra Burke tells Anita Singh that she’s trying her best on ‘Strictly’ in memory of her late mother
In the language of television talent shows, it’s been a rollercoaster week for Alexandra Burke. Last Saturday, she was flying high at the top of the Strictly Come Dancing leaderboard, only to poll so few public votes that she was relegated to the dance-off for the second week running. The judges saved her. A day later, she read the latest in a string of negative tabloid stories about her “diva” behaviour on set, an article that ended with: “Alex… the great British public clearly don’t want you to win.”
It was a cruel line. The vitriol that has come her way in recent weeks would be hard for any contestant to take. “It got to a point where I can’t take any more mentally,” she says.
It all came at a time when Burke was already fighting to keep her head above water. On the first show of the series, when she shimmied down the red carpet, beaming to the crowd, she was hiding the fact that her mother,
Melissa Bell, had died that day.
Bell, the guiding influence in Burke’s life, had been ill for a decade with kidney failure and had spent the last year and four months in hospital. The night before the Strictly launch,
‘She died at 4am. I started playing her music and held her hand, and she went’
Burke was in Blackpool touring with the musical Sister Act when she got a call telling her to come to London.
“She died at four in the morning. She waited for me to drive home from Blackpool. I started playing her music and just held her hand. And she went,” Burke says softly.
We are at the Strictly rehearsal studios in a north London suburb, and she is talking in-depth for the first time about everything she has been through. Her first instinct was to quit the show. “I said to myself, I can’t do this,” she recalls through tears. “And it was my auntie, my mum’s sister… she turned to me and said: ‘I have to be your mum now and tell you that if you don’t go for your dream, it’s never going to come back.’
“I was sitting outside. The sun came up. Then I went home, showered and went straight down to the recording. The only person that knew out of all the contestants was Aston [Merrygold], who I told because he knows my mum. And
I tell you something, that was the hardest day of my life.”
Burke is sobbing her heart out as she says this. “I’m not going to lie: I’m so angry that she’s gone. Two months later, I can’t understand it – why she’s 53 and gone.”
The pair had a complex relationship, and there were suggestions a few years ago that Bell felt eclipsed by her daughter.
A single mother to four children, she was part of the Eighties band Soul II Soul, but as their biggest hits came several years before Bell joined, her career did not bring riches. She channelled her ambitions into her daughter.
But by the time of her death, they were close. It was Bell who encouraged Burke to appear on Strictly, although “encouraged” might be too soft a word.
“From the age of five she had me not playing out, but in a room
learning Whitney Houston albums and performing them back to her and my teddy bears,” says Burke.
By nine, the schoolgirl was performing in pubs and clubs. If there are shades of Gypsy’s Mama Rose about this, Burke is unaware of it. “My mum was my biggest supporter,” she says. “I have so many great memories – hard ones, too – of her pushing me and saying: ‘If you want to sing, this is what you need to do’.”
Aged 16, Burke entered X Factor and was devastated not to make it through. Three years later, the producers were back in town.
Bell hauled her reluctant daughter out of bed and packed her off to the queue. Only the group auditions were left and Burke walked into the auditorium to find her mother had signed them up as a duo.
But Bell had a plan. “We auditioned for two producers, and my mum said to me: ‘I’m going to sound like a dying cat, and you’re going to sound amazing.’ So she starts, and at the end they say: ‘No to the mum, yes to the daughter.’ She went: ‘That’s exactly what I wanted’, clicked her fingers, walked out. And that’s how I got my career. I can’t believe to this day she put herself out there like that.” It’s a memory that has her laughing uproariously. She is determined not to be consumed by grief.
In 2008, Burke was 19 when she won X Factor, in the days when the
final could attract 14million viewers, and 8million votes from the public. She was criticised on that show, too, for being fake and gushy, all that talk of feeling “blessed”. But here was a teenage girl from a north London council estate, duetting with Beyoncé and winning a £1 million record contract; of course, she felt blessed. Now she’s on the BBC’S most popular Saturday night show, and she feels the same.
Burke is emotional, theatrical, with a rocket-fuelled desire to succeed, and the great British public isn’t so comfortable with that. People also like a “journey” for Strictly contestants, but 29-year-old Burke has been consistently good all the way through. It has led to the usual grumbles about previous dance experience, but Burke is not stage-school trained and, after a spell in musical theatre, has no more experience than some of the others.
She watches her performances back “and you would never know that I was shaking back in the wings, knees knocking, sweaty palms”. The second she walks on stage, Burke goes into a bubble. “I have this professional face, one that I’ve been taught since the age
of five that, when the cameras are on, you smile and you be gracious. My mum always said to me, ‘You’re as good as your last performance, so you bloody perform’.”
Some have accused Burke of lacking warmth, but they should meet her. She turns up to the studio with tonsillitis, nursing a hip injury, two days after the negative press became so overwhelming that she issued a plea on Twitter for it to stop. There are hours of rehearsals ahead of her, and after an exhausting day in the Strictly studio, she’ll go home to Hertfordshire and work into the night on her new album.
Yet here she is with her megawatt smile, hugging everyone in sight, trying to turn everything into a positive. Her tweet elicited an outpouring of messages from fans, urging her to keep going.
“It got to a point where it felt like a personal attack,” she says of the press stories that claimed she has hissy fits backstage, yells at her Spanish dance partner Gorka Marquez, and is engaged in a “bitter feud” with fellow contestant Debbie Mcgee. She dismisses them all as ridiculous (Mcgee also described their feud as “codswallop”).
To her many supporters, the attitude towards Burke has felt like bullying. Is there also a whiff of racism? Strong black women don’t have an easy ride – just ask Serena Williams or Michelle Obama. Of course, if Burke was to agree with this, she would be accused of playing the race-card. “I’ve seen all of that and read it. I disagree. I never bring race into things, and I think when people do it kind of makes things very negative. So, for me, I stay away from that,” she says evenly.
Her dance partner, Gorka, who ambles in midway through our chat, is a “very supportive” presence, she says; there is no jealousy from her boyfriend, Josh Ginnelly, a stage manager whom she has been dating for the past 18 months. Despite Burke spending 10 hours a day in handsome Gorka’s arms, the Curse of Strictly has not struck: “The thing is, when I met Josh, I was kissing another guy on stage in The Bodyguard,” she laughs.
I ask if Burke has her future mapped out, and of course she has. “Couple more years of working really hard and then we can settle. I’ve got the five-year plan going on. Kids. Absolutely kids.” She once claimed to want nine children, but has scaled that back a little.
“Four is a good number. I think I just want four. Like my mum did.”
‘I have a professional face, that when the cameras are on, you smile and be gracious’