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Red Moon · 21-11-2008, 08:24 AM

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It's lonely being Leona: The X Factor winner on the life she left behind

Leona Lewis is sitting in front of me drinking water. The fact that it's water is important - on her way out of this interview she's photographed by the waiting paparazzi and it is reported that she is 'looking the worse for wear'.

She's not, of course. Leona doesn't drink. Never has. She says alcohol tastes like hairspray. But, hey, the paps have been standing in the drizzle outside this Mayfair hotel for several hours. They've only managed to grab a shot of Piers Morgan so far and Leona sells. Sells big.

Best Album and Best Video at this year's Mobo Awards, Best Act in the UK and Ireland at the MTV Europe Music Awards, first British recording artist to enter the American Billboard charts at No 1 with a first album.

So, yes, Leona could be forgiven for being, well, rather full of herself when we meet for a chat - sandwiched between an awards dinner with Glamour magazine (after winning The X Factor in 2006, she was last year's Glamour Woman Of the Year) and an Agent Provocateur fashion show.

But she's not diva-ish. Not at all. She's wearing black plastic boots (a vegetarian since 12, she never wears leather) and a comfy woolly cardigan. In fact, she's so normal I have to keep reminding myself she is one of Britain's biggest ever female singing stars. In truth, she does too.

'I think to myself: "What was I doing two years ago?" I was a receptionist,' she says in a voice that's little above a whisper. 'Who used to drive me around two years ago? Me. Now I'll be given lovely dresses to wear and lovely hotels to stay in and think: "Two years ago, if I was given this, oh my God, I'd have fainted.'' ' The whisper peters out.

She fiddles with a pencil and pad in front of her. 'But it can be very lonely, particularly LA,' she says, looking at the pad. 'LA is sparse and you have to drive such long distances to get anywhere. When I was making my first album, Spirit, it was really, really lonely because it was just me and an A & R (artists and repertoire) guy.

'And, because of the time difference, you're in a different mindset when you're talking to people. I'd talk to people late at night LA time and they were just waking up so would be a bit tired. Or I'd talk to them early in the morning and I'd be tired. I didn't have my family and my friends around.'

Again, that whisper silences itself. I'm reminded somehow of a fawn caught in a car's headlights, but when I ask her about her singing and her ambition, she's as steely as steely can be. Words like 'focus', 'determined', and 'vision' trip off her tongue.

'I used to sit up in my room for hours and hours listening to music, practising music, playing my piano,' she says. 'I'd dance and do ballet up in my room on my own. I wouldn't go out with my friends.

It's an escape for me. When I sing I go somewhere else, out of this world - not here. It's another place where I'm free to do whatever I want to, free to express myself.'

This is about as revealing as Leona, 23, gets. She knows that whatever she says - and more often than not, what she doesn't say - gets seized upon, whipped up, spun around. In the last few weeks alone, we've been told that she's about to get married, that she wants to adopt a baby, that she's splitting up with her long-time boyfriend (Lou Al-Chamaa, a qualified electrician), that they've got engaged.

'Lou just gets along with it,' she says. 'Obviously it's hard for him to adjust to this Leona Lewis thing, just as it is for a lot of other people around me.

'People see me as this name and say this and that about me when they don't really know me. It can get frustrating for him - it does for my mum and dad, too. But they're all really proud.'

I can imagine. Still, what is the score with Lou? Separated? Engaged? Married - or about to be?

'He's a great friend to me,' she says warily. 'The foundation of our relationship is friendship. He's been very supportive.'

Lou is now working for Simon Cowell, trying his hand at the music business. Simon, presumably wants to make sure his top X Factor find is happy and, for the moment, if Lou is happy, Leona is happy.

She says she doesn't want to tempt fate by looking too far ahead though. 'I'm a now person,' she says. 'I think Lou's great. I'd love, in the future, to get married and have children - have a family - because he's such a great person.

'But I don't know what's going to happen in the future. I don't know where I'm going to be. I don't know anything, but I hope for that. You can't know.

You can build this whole dream but you never know what's going to happen.'

We meet shortly before Leona appears on this year's X Factor series to sing Bleeding Love. She makes Simon Cowell weep. He's genuinely fond and protective of her. She seems to have that effect on people.

This other place she goes to when she's singing, what's it like? 'It's like a dream. It's my favourite colour - pastel pink - and there's just me there,' she says.

The past two years have been a time of incredible highs for Leona, but incredible lows, too. She lost her 14-year- old cousin Billie to leukaemia and her beloved grandmother Queenie just weeks after winning The X Factor. She's dedicated her album to them - they're represented in the artwork by a butterfly and a feather.

'My cousin's death is very new,' she says hesitantly. 'People try to push you to talk about it. I like to talk about experiences because I know a lot of people have lost loved ones, but I don't like to go into it. It's not something I want my family to read. It's too painful. It wasn't that long ago. It's still very raw.

'She was 12 when she was diagnosed and she died at 14. I was 21 at the time. She was like a sister. We all had hope that she'd get better. She went into remission. It was just up and down, up and down.

'I can't imagine how it was for her mum and dad and her brother - absolutely awful. She passed away just before I went on The X Factor. In my music I draw on those emotions. Real emotions that I've felt and that I'm going through.

'My cousin is a big part of my singing and my music. It keeps me going. She's inspiring because she was so supportive and positive and strong. She wanted to be a singer, a dancer, a lawyer and a model.

'She wanted to do so much. When I visited her, she'd ask: "When are you going to make it?" I remember her in lots of different ways, but mostly for her hopefulness.

'I've realised you have to enjoy the moments you have now and not wait for tomorrow or next week. You have to live in the now and be hopeful for the future. That comes from losing people - my grandmother, too.'

When her grandmother was admitted to hospital with diabetes, Leona was allowed to visit her every week during the X Factor in 2006. 'It spurred her on seeing me on TV,' she says. 'When she died it was a big, big low. I'd done The X Factor and went on tour. When I came back to London, I was told she was extremely ill and that it was probably her time to go.

'I remember being really, really upset and then I remember thinking: "I'm actually here now. I could have been away and off and gone, not able to be here." But I was here, so I got down to the hospital, then she passed away that night.

'She said to me: "I'm so proud of you. You've made me the proudest." Because we'd just lost our granddad as well, it was as if it was her time to go.

'I also remember her saying: "I'm just going into the other room." She'd deteriorated and was really ill. I think it was from a broken heart because of my granddad.'

Leona was brought up in a close-knit family with two brothers on a sink estate in Hackney, East London. She adores her parents - her mother worked as a social worker and her father as a youth offenders' officer - who are protective, warm souls.

They gave up their dreams - her mother was a ballet dancer and her father a part-time DJ - to give their children the best childhood they could.

Leona, who sang almost before she could talk, was sent to the performing arts school Italia Conti in London, where she was the only non-white student, until the pennies ran out.

I begin to understand her shyness when she explains: 'I felt I was different. I wasn't made to feel different but I knew I was because I had tanned skin and curly hair.

'My mum and dad have always said to me: "You are who you are and that's it.

You're going to be different from some people." So I tried to get along with everyone. The only thing that made me feel uncomfortable was that there were a lot of real rich kids there, and I wasn't in that world.'

She felt even more of a square peg in a round hole when her parents could no longer afford the fees, so she was forced to leave and go to a local school.

'I didn't enjoy those years,' she says. 'When it came to going to this new school, I said to my parents: 'Please don't make me leave.' But they had to pay the mortgage and the bills.

'It was very hard for them. I was gutted. If I hadn't had my music and dance after school, I'd have been depressed. I used to wish the day away so I could get to dance.'

She may be living her dream now, but that doesn't stop her worrying that everything will crumble away. This interview has been delayed for 24 hours because the day before she felt ill and was worried about her voice.

'I get scared of things not panning out the way I want them too,' she says. 'I wonder what I'd do if anything happened to my voice. That's why I look after myself so much. I must be one of the most paranoid people I know.

'I'll say: "I can't talk to you for too long. I can't do this or that because I'm doing a show." I'll miss nights out because I can't be talking over loud music. I get panicked in case something happens.'

In the aftermath of her success on The X Factor, she almost ran herself into the ground and was plagued by illness, prompting speculation that she needed surgery on her throat.

'I had bouts of infection at a time when my immune system was low,' she says. 'I was ill and sickly and getting flu all the time. I was travelling so much and having to get used to the time changes. Your body has to say: "All right, I need a break." ' So what of poor

Laura White - a firm favourite to make this year's final - who was so surprisingly voted off two weeks ago?

'Terrible,' she says. 'But as I've said to other people when they've said it's unfair: "Did you vote for her?" You've got to vote for someone if you want them to stay in.'

She is just as diplomatic when I ask her about one of the main X Factor conspiracy theories - that Laura was made a sacrificial lamb because her singing voice was too similar to Leona's. The theory goes that, had she won, Laura would have competed for sales with Simon's golden girl, and that Simon preferred the very different singing style of Diana.

'Laura and I aren't similar,' she says. 'We use the same ranges, but as a singer she's very different. She's very jazzy.'

But yes, she says, she's grateful for every single vote she received when she won the show. It has enabled her to live her dream. But still she worries. She's worrying now. Our chat has overrun.

Just before she stands to leave, she confides: 'I get this recurring dream of jumping down stairs. It's this huge flight of stairs from a flat we lived in when I was three, and I'm standing at the top. I can remember the blue carpet and red banisters. Every time I jump I feel like I'm going to hit my head or something's going to happen to me, and my heart jumps out of my throat. I have that dream all the time.'

Then she smiles, gives a big, genuine hug and bounds off into the flashes of the paparazzi.

Source: Daily Mail