Alesha Dixon: Dancing to a new tune
By
Chitra Ramaswamy
ScotlandonSunday
November 09, 2008
It's hard to believe that before a certain reality TV show came along her life looked so different.
IT'S THE morning after the night before and Alesha Dixon has a hangover from hell. I know this before meeting her because I've seen the morning papers. There she is, papped outside her London hotel in dressing gown and Ugg boots, celebrating her 30th birthday at A-list hangout Bungalow 8. It's hard to believe that before a certain reality TV show came along her life looked so different.
In the space of mere weeks, Dixon had been dropped by her record label, her debut solo album – after fronting girl band Mis-teeq – never surfaced, and her marriage to So Solid Crew's MC Harvey came to a very bitter, very public end when she discovered he was cheating on her with a mutual friend.
"It's scary. Strictly changed everything," she says in a husky voice that must have cracked under the pressure of her bone-shaking cackle. Anyone who watched her win Strictly Come Dancing last year knows how much Dixon enjoys a big, dirty laugh. "I always tell every person who comes up to me and says they voted that they've played a part in the next chapter of my life. People don't realise the impact it has had for me."
"It's scary. Strictly changed everything," she says in a husky voice that must have cracked under the pressure of her bone-shaking cackle. Anyone who watched her win Strictly Come Dancing last year knows how much Dixon enjoys a big, dirty laugh. "I always tell every person who comes up to me and says they voted that they've played a part in the next chapter of my life. People don't realise the impact it has had for me."
She looks remarkably perky for someone who rolled into bed at 4am. All evidence of a heavy night has evaporated, well, apart from the Ugg boots. It's her combination of can't-keep-a-good-girl-down sass and Home Counties humour, the fact that she is the kind who would put her wedding dress on eBay (it didn't sell) and describe her rumoured relationship on Strictly with fellow contestant Matt D'Angelo as "beyond me – I'm old enough to be his mother", that helped boost her ratings on the show. It was her fancy footwork, however, that had a smitten Bruce Forsyth crowning her Europe's answer to Beyoncé (though Beyoncé has never MC-ed in the style of a nicotine-addled Jamaican as Dixon is wont to do) and Strictly judge Bruno Tonioli likening her to Josephine Baker.
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