Process: The powerful instant Sunday Times bestseller

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Smith, Carl. "Lucy Spraggan Announces debut Album 'Join the club' and single 'last night' ". Sugarscape.com . Retrieved 28 August 2013. Spraggan also recalled what it was like when Cowell reached out to her in an interview with BBC Breakfast, claiming that his apology meant a great deal to her as it was something that no one else offered. The singer-songwriter – who was aged 20 at the time – was celebrating fellow contestant Rylan Clark’s birthday in Mayfair, as ITV reported. Yeah,” I said, and I heard a crash of something being thrown across the room on the other end of the line. Then I heard a noise that sounded like a scene from a wildlife documentary: a primal, guttural cry, the kind that a buffalo makes when it watches helplessly from a distance as a lion kills its young. The line went dead.

Additionally, a spokesperson for Fremantle, the British TV company that produced The X Factor described her experience as “truly horrific” and said that “whilst we believed throughout that we were doing our best to support Lucy in the aftermath of the ordeal, as Lucy thinks we could have done more, we must therefore recognise this.” In an event of such a distressing nature, welfare and support towards the victim would always be of the utmost priority.” Whilst we have worked hard to try and protect Lucy’s lifetime right to anonymity, we applaud her strength and bravery now that she has chosen to waive that right.”Lucy also exposed the manipulation of the contestants by the production companies during filming. I actually recall watching that year's show and thought that it appeared even more 'manipulative' than previous years - indeed, once Lucy was no longer a part of the show (reportedly because she was 'ill') and then Ella Henderson was voted off (which was a travesty to me), I stopped watching the show for the remainder of that year, thinking it was all 'fixed'. This was narrated by Lucy herself, and she has such a way with words. The ferrero rocher/raffaello analogy of gender was so simple and yet so powerful 👏🏽 It was very eye-opening to hear her talk about how different her life might have been, had she grown up in a time more accepting of non binary/trans. The letters to her younger self were so touching, and I loved the inclusion of her lyrics + learning what point in life she was at when she wrote different songs. The meaning behind them adds a whole new impact to the lyrics and I especially loved the story behind one of my favourites 𝘁𝗲𝗮 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗼𝗮𝘀𝘁. One of my favourite things about this book is the inclusion of song lyrics and where Lucy was in her life when she wrote specific songs. I have loved her music since the beginning but hearing the reasons behind some of the lyrics makes it extra special. She also told her story in an emotional interview with The Guardian, recalling the moment she realised what had happened to her. “I woke up the next day with this sense of sheer dread. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that level of confusion since,” she said. “I knew that I’d been raped, but I could not process that. So I put my clothes on and went into autopilot.” Now a decade later, she notes that she hasn't since experienced any other situation wherein "somebody completely takes the reins of my life [...] If I had experienced that again, as a normal human being, I would have said that I would have been in an abusive relationship."

She also viewed the enforced isolation of the pandemic as generally a positive thing. It afforded her much-needed respite from being an extremely busy touring musician (“it can consume your whole world”) and it enabled her to become much more self-aware (“I hadn’t spent any time doing that”). In turn, her creative development and productivity levels increased.A spokesperson for ITV said: “The X Factor was produced by Thames [part of Fremantle] and Syco, who were responsible for duty of care towards all of its programme contributors. ITV is committed to having in place suitable and robust processes to protect the mental health and welfare of programme participants, and we have continued to evolve and strengthen our approach.”