ALL ABOUT ALEXANDRA
DESCRIBE YOURSELF IN THREE WORDS Loyal, loving, humble. LAST MEAL ON EARTH My mum’s spag bol. WHO WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO BE STUCK ON A DESERT ISLAND WITH? Michael Jackson. FASHION GO-TO Chanel. MANTRA The sky isn’t the limit, it’s only a view. ON YOUR TV Game of Thrones. TRAVEL BUCKET LIST Bora Bora. WHAT EMBARRASSES YOU? Josh’s jokes. STARSTRUCK MOMENT Meeting Stevie Wonder.
comfortable with someone and ordering Chinese takeaways. We have four dogs together and they are our babies. Our youngest is a French bulldog, which Josh gave me for my birthday in 2015. We also have a pomeranian, a chihuahua and a Yorkshire terrier. On the rare weekends when we aren’t working, we take them all on long walks in the countryside. In Caribbean culture [Alexandra’s mother was of Jamaican descent], you’re not meant to have animals in your house. I am so grateful mum rejected that and embraced pets – when I was growing up, we were always taking in rescue dogs. I have always been a Mummy’s and a Daddy’s girl. The Bible tells us to ‘honour thy father and thy mother’, and I have taken that to heart. I am very religious – I go to a gospel church in London and have never walked on stage without praying first. My dad has only been a part of my life in the past decade. My parents divorced when I was very young and for a long time didn’t talk. Growing up, I’d see my friends with their fathers and think, ‘I want that.’ Mum was hurt by him, but she realised it would make her children happy if they became friends, so they did. That is what I call unconditional love. I respect them both so much. I am still in a very sad place about losing Mum, but also in a happy place. I appreciate what I have and don’t take a thing for granted because you never know what tomorrow will bring. Mum may have died young, at 53, but she’d done more than most 80-year-olds. She raised four kids on her own, always provided for us, working on Christmas Day singing in pubs so she could afford to have presents for us stacked around the tree. Whenever I get a bit down, I think, ‘Who am I to moan? That woman fought for her life.’ It was difficult to read what was written about me while I was on Strictly. For 11 weeks, the negativity kept coming – the diva thing, the fake tears – but I said nothing. I don’t have enemies, but if I did, I would never wish on them the pain I went through losing a parent. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and these days everyone has one, and they have Twitter as a platform for sharing it. I can only sigh and think, ‘They don’t understand what I was going through.’ Mum would have told me not to retaliate because they don’t know my truth. I did a life-coaching course in New York a few years ago, and I used a lot of the techniques I learned there to cope. Anyway, the positives of doing Strictly completely outweighed the negatives. It wasn’t that upsetting not to win Strictly. The fact that we made it all the way to the final was incredible. We could have gone out in week two and been gutted at missing out, so to get through to the end meant everything. I was so happy for Joe and Katya. We were all hugging and saying, ‘It’s amazing we made it this far!’ Zoë Ball texted me and said, ‘Enjoy it, babe, because you won’t do these dances again.’ It’s true: I won’t be randomly doing the jive. At the wrap party, I was the only one who stayed on the dancefloor all night. My feet were so swollen. My family were there with me – the experience gave us all such a boost. Seeing Mum on Top of the Pops made me want to be a singer. I remember her walking into the house [after performing ‘Wish’ with Soul II Soul in 1993] and she looked like a princess. I thought, ‘I’m going to do what you’ve done.’ And I did. They brought [TOTP] back the year I won The X Factor and I was one of the last people ever to be on it. My three loves were always singing, dancing and acting, but Mum made me stop dancing – I was part of a successful street-dance group – and acting to focus on singing. She said: ‘You need to be really good at one thing.’ It was the right advice, and now I get to do all of them again. Doing musicals has made my voice much stronger, and Strictly has given me so much stamina. Growing up, I was a tomboy. I played basketball and football, ran in every race at sports day and excelled at hurdles. It all changed when I was 15 and my sister [Alexandra has a sister, Sheneice, and two brothers, David and Aaron, on her mum’s side, to whom she is very close, and ‘more halves than I can count’ on her dad’s] said to me: ‘Girl, if you want to be a singer, you’ve got to learn to wear a heel like Beyoncé.’ Then she took me, behind Mum’s back, to get my belly button pierced and I thought, ‘I like this.’ That’s when the tomboy left the building. I can’t sit down for five minutes. I tend to everyone else to keep busy. If I get home and Josh is there, I’ll be, like, ‘Can I cook for you?’ And don’t get me started on cleaning… I am a freak about cleaning my house. I work out a lot and do yoga. There have been moments when I’ve managed stillness – I once wrote a blog about it – but mainly I need to keep busy, especially now to block out the pain of losing Mum. It may not be the healthiest response, but it works for me. I haven’t had a day off in five years – with The Bodyguard, Sister Act and straight into Strictly – and now that I am promoting my album, it doesn’t look as though I will have one until February 2019.
Signing to Decca was a dream.
I burst into tears signing that contract. It was so overwhelming walking into the Universal building, knowing I was about to be signed. To think that when I was first asked to do The Bodyguard, I had to decline because I had issues with confidence. Now I have an album coming out and will be performing at the London Palladium.
Alexandra’s new album The Truth Is by Decca and available now. She will be touring in September. Visit alexandraburkeofficial.com
I HAVEN’T HAD A DAY OFF FOR FIVE YEARS – IT DOESN’T LOOK AS THOUGH I WILL HAVE ONE UNTIL 2019”