outline
Alesha Dixon has one of the most incredible stories of any star, yet she remains an enigma. Behind the fabulous smile and signature laugh is a private woman whose childhood was blighted by domestic violence, poverty and a lack of confidence. As a beautiful young woman, she has struggled to overcome professional failure and the devastating effect of her husband’s infidelity.
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The UK’s leading celebrity biographer Sean Smith has travelled to her home town to uncover the truth about her upbringing, her unconditional love for her mother, her loyalty to her extended family, her feud with her elder brother and her unsettled relationship with her Jamaican father, who left home for good when she was four.
He discovers a sensitive and secretive woman, who managed to keep her long-term relationship with a member of one of the country’s best-known boy bands hidden from public scrutiny. For the first time that love affair can now be revealed. He examines the circumstances that led to the break-up of her marriage to rapper MC Harvey and the effect that unhappy time has had on her life.
Alesha describes a roller-coaster career that began when she was ‘discovered’ at a dance class in Central London. She achieved huge early success with Mis-Teeq, who had seven consecutive top ten hits before their record label went bust. Her subsequent solo career stalled when she was dropped by Polydor before her debut album was even released, but she turned things around with a spectacular victory on Strictly Come Dancing. Sean Smith lays bare her subsequent TV career, including the row over her appointment as a judge on the programme, as well as her triumphant switch to Britain’s Got Talent in 2012.
Alesha is the dramatic and uplifting account of her journey from a humble start in life and how she overcame all obstacles in her way to become an inspiration to women everywhere.
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“Perhaps understandably, Alesha seems from an early age to have a developed a compulsive desire to keep her life secret. The image she portrays has always been of an open, smiling, happy young woman and she has seldom wavered from that. Only when she became a successful public figure who could make a difference has she spoken of the highly personal matters that have so affected her family. The secrecy has spilled over into every aspect of her life.
She certainly didn’t want the public to know that she was the girlfriend of a member of one of the most famous boy bands in the country. Incredible she managed keep her relationship with Noel Simpson of Damage, her first serious love, entirely hidden for nearly fifteen years.
The image of Mis-Teeq was of talented girls struggling to make it. They religiously stuck with this story in interviews, making no mention of the financial support and musical expertise of Louise Porter or the input of her right-hand man David Brant. And that image would have had no credibility if everyone knew that at the end of Alesha’s shift at Ladbrokes, Noel would be waiting patiently outside to pick her up. It would have been the dream of many a teenage girl to go out with someone in a boy band and Alesha was living it.”
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