X Factor’s rapper: I’m no Ali G fake
...even though I went to private school and my mum’s a concert pianist
SHE’S the ‘real deal’ rapper who infuriated Simon Cowell by making it through the opening round of the new series of The X Factor.
But the millions of viewers who saw Honey G in her baseball cap, ripped jeans and shades on last night’s show will be stunned to discover the self-styled ‘genuine urban artist’ was privately educated and comes from a highly privileged background.
Despite proclaiming, ‘I am a genuine urban artist and urban music is about being real’, Honey G’s real name is Anna Georgette Gilford. Her mother, Yvonne, is a classically trained pianist who has performed with the BBC at the Royal Albert Hall, while her father, Laurence, is a retired dentist.
Anna, 35, went to fee-paying St
‘Everything about me is real’
Helen’s School in Northwood, North-West London before taking her GCSEs at the private Peterborough and St Margaret’s High School For Girls in nearby Stanmore. She is now set to be compared to Ali G – Sacha Baron Cohen’s comic ‘gangster rapper’ from the leafy suburb of Staines.
But the contestant insisted: ‘I would not want people to question if I was the real deal. I have grown up with urban music all my life. Everything about me is real. There is nothing fake.’
The singer said she had lost her middle-class accent as a result of having spent a lot of time on the underground music scene. However, head judge Simon Cowell couldn’t hide his dislike of the act. He said: ‘Make her stop!’ He later added: ‘That shouldn’t happen.’
But fellow judges Sharon Osbourne and Nicole Scherzinger lauded her performance and she is now through to the next round.
Meanwhile, Scots teenager Emily Middlemas is back for a second crack at stardom. Aged 15, she made it to the judges’ houses stage in 2014 – only for Cheryl Fernandez-Versini to tell her she was ‘too young’.
Now 17, Emily, from Glasgow, said ahead of her appearance on tonight’s show: ‘I went away and found myself as a musician and also as a person. I now feel more confident.’