Alesha has defended Susan Boyle’s makeover in the wake of her amazing rise to fame on Britain’s Got Talent, saying; “It’s her body.” Alesha is well placed to comment on the overwhelming reaction to hearing The Hairy Angel’s beautiful voice from within that unrefined body, having made a BBC documentary called Look But Don’t Touch, which examined society’s obsession with female looks. When asked if she thought Boyle was right to get a makeover to ease her time in the spotlight Alesha said; “It’s her body and her skin. It’s about expressing who you are, not what you look like. The Susan Boyle thing is just a perfect illustration of the fact that we should never judge a book by its cover, because a lot of people thought she was going to be a joke, purely because of the way she looked, yet she had a beautiful voice. I think in this country we are guilty of putting people on a pedestal for looking a certain way but, thankfully, in this country it is also about character and she proved she has character.”
Dixon, 30, recently got a taste of life in the spotlight without her lippy when she took part in Comic Relief’s celebrity trek up Kilimanjaro – alongside Cheryl Cole, Gary Barlow, Ronan Keating, Chris Moyles et al – and was filmed by a documentary crew during her most difficult moments.
“It was really tough, probably the hardest thing I have done in my life, and I came back from there scarred and tired,” she sighs. “I’m trying to be careful here because I don’t want to be negative about it. Lots of good came out of it – we raised £3m for charity – but for me it was a struggle. The altitude affects your emotions and as the oxygen levels got thinner it affected my spirits. And just walking for eight hours at a time, it’s hard to stay focussed, so the only way I could maintain focus was thinking about the people we were doing it for.”
Back on more comfortable ground, Dixon has just begun a European tour with Spanish sex symbol Enrique Iglesias – “I’ve had more of my male friends asking about him than female friends,” she giggles – and is glad to be back on the road.
Before she was known for winning Strictly Come Dancing, Dixon started her showbiz life as one third of the hit-making urban pop group Mis-Teeq. When Mis-Teeq broke up in 2005 Dixon went solo and released her debut album Fired Up in 2005. However, it was a relative failure and she was dropped by her record company shortly after. Winning Strictly in 2007 reinvigorated her profile though, and she capitalised on that boost with her comeback single, an infectious mambo number called The Boy Does Nothing, which charted at number five. Since then she has flown forward. Her second solo album The Alesha Show has shifted more than 100,000 copies and peaked at 12 in the charts, but she has also made the move into TV presenting and was recently cast in a film called Milestones, for which she will also write the music. It’s all indicative of her work ethic.
“I remember speaking to Lionel Ritchie at the Brits last year and he gave me some advice,” she recalls. “He said, ‘if you are at home for more than four days in this business then something’s wrong’. In this industry, there are no guarantees that your career is going to last so you have to maximise your career at all times, particularly when you are younger and have the energy. I want to work hard now because I don’t want to look back in years to come and think I could have done more.”
Source: Wales Online
Hi Aleesh,
I love your giggle,
please continue and have fun while you build your career, for instanstance “Milestones” for which you will also write the music, and the TV presentations !
I think you can do a lot more when trying…
Love, respect, Harry “Soulman”
(In my head comes up “Black Pearl”)