School was okay for me generally. I got teased a lot at primary school because I was never one of the ‘cool’ kids. I did hang around with a cool group, but I never really felt properly part of it. For some reason boys in particular were mean to me. But by the time I reached secondary school things changed a lot and I had a really solid group of friends who I’m still incredibly close to now. My best friend is called Hannah and she’s the most supportive person ever. We’re so close and we’re always there for each other. I’m a bit of a party girl and we used to go raving together, to house parties or clubs. Hannah and I used to do spontaneous things like go to London for a night without knowing where we were going. I’m very much a live for the moment kind of person.
I loved music, drama, English and French at school. I was quite a good girl and rarely got into trouble. I did so many things growing up. While I was at secondary school I tried out acting, I played the drums for a while, learnt piano, had singing lessons – you name it, I gave it a go.
I took part in loads of talent shows, and I was also in a choir called Street Dreams and we used to busk in supermarkets to raise money for charity. I still support them now because they’ve done so much for me. I was also in a music company called Songbirds, which gave me some good experience.
Leigh-Anne in a school photo aged four
Leigh-Anne as a baby
After leaving school I got a job as an Aim Higher mentor for Year 8 students at my mum’s school. I would help them to maintain their targets and concentrate on their studies and watch their progress. It was a really rewarding thing to do.
I stayed on for sixth form at my school to study for my A-levels in music, English and psychology, and while I was there I was made head girl. We had to have interviews for it and I must have done pretty well! My job was to be a good role model and set a good example for the younger students. That was good, because before I used to hate public speaking, and it really helped me to build up my confidence.
Just before I auditioned for The X Factor I was working as a waitress at Pizza Hut in High Wycombe, and I was planning to study educational studies at university if music didn’t work out. I wanted to do a Postgraduate certificate in education and go into primary school teaching.
I used to save up all of my tips and travel to London to spend time in a recording studio called Atomic Studios with a producer named Jerome. I’d posted on Channel AKA a recording of ‘100 Days’, a song that I’d made with an artist called Rampant. I started getting a bit of recognition off the back of that, and Jerome’s brother rang me up and asked me if I wanted to go into the studio and work on some tracks.
Jerome used to make all of my beats for me, and we’d write together. I’ve been writing songs for years and years and I love it. I also worked with a guy named Varren Wade, who used to be in a band called Fun-Da-Mental, and with a girl named Katie Pearl who sang on the funky house track ‘Something in the Air’.
I was really happy with the music I’d been working on as a solo artist, then one day Jerome said that I should be in a girl band. He probably meant it to be encouraging, but it made me cry, because I thought it meant that he didn’t think I was good enough to make it on my own. I couldn’t see myself as anything but a solo artist, but I didn’t know what was around the corner …
Dreaming of being a star. Leigh-Anne singing karaoke at home on her eighth birthday
My dad had been telling me for years that I should audition for The X Factor, but my mum was putting me off because she was worried I’d be crushed if it didn’t work out. Funnily enough, my dad then suggested that I get a girl band together, but I still wasn’t into the idea. Some time later I was having one of those days when I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life, so I sat down at my computer and filled out the X Factor application form. I just thought I had nothing to lose. Then I got a call to say I had an audition, which was a real shock. And that’s when it all started.
We moved around quite a lot and even went to New Zealand for a while. We were there for just over a year when I was about 11, but we ended up moving back to the UK because sadly my granddad had a stroke so Mum wanted to be able to look after him. It’s a lovely place, though, and I’d love to go back one day. I had some of the best times of my life there and I have so many amazing memories.
Perrie aged two with her nan
I had a really nice time growing up in the North East. I come across as quite ‘out there’, but in fact I was really shy as a child. I could talk when I was about eight months old, and my mum said that people used to find it dead weird that I could have conversations that young.
Perrie in her favourite red coat, aged two
One of my earliest memories is from when I was a toddler. Mum was wheeling me through the Metro Centre in Gateshead in my pushchair and we saw some other young kids. They didn’t have dummies so my mum said to me, ‘Look Perrie, they don’t need dummies because they’re big girls. Are you a big girl?’ I took my dummy out and threw it into a nearby pond because I’d seen people throwing money into it. Then I decided I wanted the dummy back and I screamed and screamed, so my poor mum had to take off her socks and shoes and go into the pond and get it back.
I first decided I wanted to be singer when I was about six. I was in the launderette with my mum and I stood up on one of the laundry machines and starting singing ‘The Sun Will Come out Tomorrow’ from Annie. All these old ladies who were in there washing their clothes were giving me 20p coins and I thought, ‘Ooh, I’d like to do this for a living!’
I loved school, and when I was in primary I was real hard working and well behaved, but things started to slide a bit when I got to secondary school. I hated maths and science – unless they had the Bunsen burner going