by Sam Bailey
Then suddenly I felt really calm and had a happy moment and I started singing Whitney songs. I was switching between screaming and crying and then laughing and singing every few minutes. I was completely delirious and didn’t know what I was doing or saying. At one point I said to one of the nurses, ‘You do know who I am don’t you?’ I wasn’t anyone! I was inviting people to my wedding, and obviously I’d already got married, and I also said I hoped the baby wasn’t ginger because my brother got bullied for being a redhead when he was a kid. I was off my head on the gas and air and my head was all over the place.
Finally the anesthetist came in and gave me an epidural. Afterwards I told her she should have an award – and then I invited her to my wedding too! Within seconds the pain had gone and for the next four hours I sat on the bed playing with my DS and everything was silent and chilled out. Then it all started again… At about midnight my contractions really kicked in and I knew the baby was coming. The nurse said I could start pushing and suddenly I heard someone say, ‘We can see the head!’ This little baby came out that looked like a little floppy chicken. I panicked slightly and then I heard a high-pitched, powerful cry. Tommy had arrived!
He was 5lb 13oz. The midwife put him in a cot next to me and he was so adorable. I didn’t have any problems with breastfeeding him at all and things seemed to be going really smoothly. Well, until I attempted to go to the toilet. I’d been stitched up and no one told me I was supposed to pour warm water as I was weeing to dilute the acidity. I started to go and I absolutely screamed my head off. A nurse came running in and opened the door from the outside. I was floods of tears; it was agony. I won’t ever make that mistake again.
I was allowed to take Tommy home the following morning, so Craig came to collect us and the first thing I heard was Brooke running up the corridor to the ward. As soon as she saw Tommy she was stroking his head and kissing him. I think she soon forgot about not wanting a baby brother! Back home we had tons of visitors over the next few days, but I was exhausted. I was having trouble sleeping and my boobs started to go really hard. At one point I was leaning over the sink with them in ice-cold water to try and soothe them. When the health visitor came round she checked me over and said I had mastitis and sent me straight to bed. Tommy had to go onto powdered milk for a while, which I hated, but I had no choice because I was put on antibiotics. I felt like I was really on the edge and scared I was on the brink of postnatal depression. I didn’t want to do anything or see anyone. I just wanted to sleep all the time.
Tommy’s crying was keeping me awake constantly, but then every time he stopped crying I would panic and think there was something wrong with him. Craig was amazing and he kept making up bottles and feeding him, but on top of everything else Tommy kept getting ill. He always had quite a high temperature and he was crying but the doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with him. That carried on for several months and it was a massive worry. I remember going to check on Tommy one night and he was sat up in his cot choking and his face had tuned blue. He’d been sick and it had got stuck in his throat. Craig rang 999 and he was diagnosed with gastroenteritis. We couldn’t understand why he was so unwell all the time. Shortly afterwards we discovered that it was because he was having a really bad reaction to the formula, which we stopped immediately.
We had several other health scares with Tommy when he was a toddler. One time I was changing his nappy when he was about two years old, I noticed that one of his testicles was much bigger than the other one. I took him to the doctor and he said it could be a strangulated hernia, which could potentially have killed him if left untreated. He was admitted to hospital and we were told that because he’d been sick so much he’d damaged the tube inside one of his testicles; it was filling up with fluid but it wasn’t draining. It happened several times after that, so we were constantly in and out of hospital with him.
When Tommy got a bit older I started doing a few gigs here and there to make some extra cash. I was doing a show in a club in Birmingham with Showaddywaddy and Frank Carson and when I got off stage I had a load of missed calls from Craig and messages saying that Tommy had been taken back into hospital. I hadn’t even had time to take my PA system down after I’d performed, but within five minutes the other acts had done it for me and sent me on my way. Showaddywaddy and Frank really helped me out and without them I would have felt even more panicked.
Driving from Birmingham to the hospital was one of the most horrific journeys I’ve ever had to do. The hospital staff were amazing but I was at my wits’ end. Tommy was checked over and monitored overnight and he was diagnosed with gastroenteritis. Whenever Tommy had been ill it was so hard to get him eating again because he went right off his food. As a result he was a tiny little thing and I was constantly worrying about him. I ended up taking him to a dietician when he was about a year and a half old because he wouldn’t eat anything. The dietician’s advice was to sit him in his high chair, let him eat with his hands and not to make any fuss at mealtimes. From then on, every time we were out in a restaurant people used to look at me with disgust. I guess to them it looked like I was letting my son eat with his hands and totally ignoring him, but it’s what I had been told to do. We went through a real difficult time with him because, of course, we knew he had to eat to survive, but he just wasn’t interested in food for so long. Tommy didn’t eat with a spoon until he was about three, and then Sunday dinners became his favourite meal so we’d have those as often as possible. Sunday dinners became Monday dinners, Tuesday dinners, and so on. He’s so much better now and he likes food a lot more, which makes things so much easier. Unfortunately, like most kids he also loves pizza and burgers now, but he does still love a roast.
After my disastrous first X Factor audition, my second ill-fated foray into the world of TV talent shows was when I applied for Britain’s Got Talent in 2010. I went to Birmingham Hippodrome and queued up for hours. Brooke had begged to come with me, so she was my wing woman. I sang ‘Take Another Little Piece of My Heart’ by Janis Joplin, but I think Brooke got more screen time than me because she was so cute. I didn’t get past the first round; it was a bit of a blow getting another knockback but it clearly just wasn’t my time. I felt like I’d been really brave trying out for another show after my previous failure and now it had happened again. Maybe talent shows just weren’t for me.
I’d put the prison service on the backburner after I had Tommy because I was so busy looking after him, but in 2010 I got an email from a woman who worked for HMP Shared Services, which is the main customer services department of the prison service. It had been almost 18 months since I’d done my Recruitment Assessment Day and a job had come up at HMP Gartree. It was out of the blue but I knew straight away that I wanted to do it. I had to do the fitness test again, but I passed no problem and went on to Prison Service College in Rugby to complete my six weeks training. It was about a 25-minute journey from my house and they wanted everyone to stay during the week and only go home at weekends, but I wasn’t comfortable with that. Because I had the kids, I came home every night, and then I’d do my revision and drive back each morning. We had exams at the end of the six weeks and if you failed those you couldn’t join the prison service full stop, so I was studying really hard. We learnt everything from first aid to equality to understanding radicalisation. Even though it was a long slog, it was a brilliant course, and well worth all the hard work I’d put in when I found out I’d passed all of the assessments. I had a passing-out parade where I got to collect my diploma. Craig, my mum and Brooke came along to watch the ceremony, and by the end of the day I was officially a prison officer.
I was starting work the following week. It was tricky to juggle everything. Brooke was in reception class, but Tommy had to be looked after by a childminder. I found a local lady we’ll call Janice. She seemed really nice and I liked that her house backed onto a park so she could take the kids out in the fresh air. The toys she had were very old and I even had to take my own crayons round for Tommy to
play with, so it wasn’t the perfect situation, but she seemed caring and professional and that was the most important thing.
My first day as a prison officer was nerve-wracking. I’d watched all kinds of scary things about prisons on TV and even though I’d been taught how to handle all kinds of different situations, I hadn’t had any first-hand experience of them yet. I was wearing my uniform and my epaulettes so I looked the part, but now I had to crack on and actually do the job.
I remember walking down one of the wings for the first time and some of the prisoners said hello to me and were very respectful. I definitely wasn’t a civvy any more; I was now a screw. I was still learning the ropes for the first few weeks, so I just observed the other officers and shadowed them. I didn’t have keys and I wasn’t allowed to restrain someone if there was an incident. I just had to watch and learn. It was quite frustrating because I wanted to get involved but it was important for me to get to know my colleagues and learn how to fill out all of the forms – of which there were many.
When I first started work I was just a basic prison officer. The inmates I looked after had things they had to do every day, like go to work, go on courses or go to AA. The ones who were unemployed or not doing courses were locked up in their cells all day. They didn’t all hang out playing snooker and having a laugh like they do on prison shows. That’s a bit of a fallacy.
It wasn’t a case of officers versus inmates either. We worked with them. If there were problems we’d tried to help them, and if they were up to no good we’d have to try and get them back on the straight and narrow. Some days I’d patrol the landings, and others I’d be in the workshops or in the yard at exercise times. Sometimes things got a bit menacing. For instance, if a bell went off because someone was on suicide watch or they’d set fire to their cell, I would assist. Those things didn’t happen that often but they did happen.
H Wing, where I worked, became a Psychological Informed Planned Environment, also known as a PIPE Wing. Quite a lot of prisons have them now and they’re for prisoners who have done anger-management or healthy-relationship courses. These are quite high-intensity courses that prisoners have to do as part of their sentences in order to progress and move on. Some of the courses take up to a year, but once they’ve completed them the prisoners can come onto the PIPE Wing.
My job changed with the move, and a big part of it became about observing the prisoners and doing group sessions. Our direct bosses were psychologists and we’d follow their instructions and then write reports. If we saw that someone was getting into an argument with another prisoner, we’d watch to see how they handled it. If they dealt with it in the way they’d learnt to on the courses we’d speak to them about what went right, or if they dealt with the situation badly we’d discuss better ways to go about things. I wasn’t just a prison officer with a set of keys; I was working very closely with certain offenders.
I was a personal officer to some prisoners, which is where you are given around eight to twelve prisoners to look after who will come to you first if they’ve got problems. That meant I had to sit down and talk through their lives with them, right back to how they were treated as a child. It was all about getting to the core of their problems and trying to understand what made them do the things they did. We helped them to change their thought patterns and it was amazing when you could see a really positive switch in someone. We couldn’t change their pasts but through the work we did we could help them to change their futures.
Like all prisons, it was full of a real cross-section of prisoners who had committed all kinds of crimes. People often ask if I was scared doing the job but if ever anything kicked off, adrenalin took over. I always knew I was working in an environment that was safe. If an alarm bell ever went off, within a matter of minutes you’d have 20 officers on the scene dealing with the situation. Quite a lot of hairy things went on but I never once felt like I was in real danger.
When the summer holidays arrived, Brooke started going along to the childminder with Tommy while I was at work. I came home one evening and Craig told me that Brooke had been found playing on train tracks with two other boys who were being looked after by Janice. They’d gone outside to play and she hadn’t even noticed that they’d left the green, crossed the road and walked through an alleyway to the train tracks. The boys had taken Brooke down there and she said that even though she knew it was wrong, she’d been too scared to snitch on them. After she went to bed I sat on the sofa and sobbed. I was so upset that my little girl had been put in danger. I decided there and then that neither of my children would ever be looked after by that woman again. I immediately emailed Ofsted and reported Janice. She didn’t even have permission for my child to be outside of her house without her. That’s not what you call ‘minding’ a child.
I phoned another local childminder I knew called Laura and hearing how upset I was she invited me round. As soon as I saw how lovely her house was I didn’t even think about the cost; I was just so relieved that I’d found somewhere so clean and modern and warm. Both of the kids loved going to Laura’s from day one and it made me feel so much happier leaving them each day.
I didn’t put on as much weight when I was pregnant with Tommy as with Brooke, but it also didn’t come off as quickly, which I was fine about. I knew I was never going to be the rake I was when I was younger and I didn’t give myself a hard time about it. I was about a size 12 by the time I started at HMP Gartree and I felt pretty comfortable.
Apart from when I was pregnant, I’d smoked non-stop since I was 15. But one day I saw my daughter copy me smoking using a candy stick. I put my fag out there and then and I haven’t touched one since. She was only six and I was completely horrified. I went cold turkey from that moment on. Craig did the same, and not surprisingly we wanted to kill each other for two weeks, but it was so worth it.
Of course one of the side effects of giving up smoking is the weight gain. Every time I wanted a cigarette I’d have a bar of chocolate instead and in a matter of months I ballooned to a size 16–18. I had to keep going to the prison uniform department to get bigger shirts and trousers. I even started wearing men’s trousers because the women’s were too tight. I felt so self-conscious that even in the height of summer I wore a zipped up jacket at all times because my boobs were so big I wanted to cover them up. It didn’t help that I was working with a large group of men. I was so hot all the time and it was horrible.
It didn’t cross my mind to go on a diet because I’d never been on one in my life. I don’t understand the concept of salad. I may as well just go into the garden and eat grass as eat cress. The only time I’d ever eat lettuce is in a cheese sandwich, and even then I’d have really strong Cheddar to disguise the taste. All the other officers were going off to the prison gym at lunchtime to work out, but all I wanted to do was watch Loose Women, have a cup of tea and eat biscuits and crisps.
We had different shifts, so sometimes I didn’t get home until 8pm and I’d have been up since 6am. I’d have dinner, usually a pizza, watch a bit of TV and then go to bed. I used to skip breakfast and then stop at the garage on the way to work and buy a newspaper and cakes and biscuits for everyone. Oh, and some sweets for me to have in my pocket during the day. I was eating so much rubbish and also eating at the wrong times. The pounds went on so quickly I didn’t even really notice to start with, and by the time I realised how big I’d got I felt like it was too late to do anything about it.
What I wore out of work totally changed too. I started wearing Craig’s jumpers and T-shirts because they were the only things that fitted me. I worked every other weekend and when I was at home I’d either want to play with the kids or I’d be catching up with TV. Craig and I hardly saw each other during that time and we were always shattered. We were both working so much we didn’t have much of a social life, so I didn’t really bother with make-up and I never bought myself new clothes. What was the point when I had nowhere to wear them?
CHAPTER 9
ONE MOMENT IN T
IME
I applied to The X Factor in 2013 completely on a whim. We always watched the show and in the break an advert came up saying, ‘Would you like to be on The X Factor? Apply now!’ I thought, sod it, I know it didn’t exactly go well last time but I’ve got nothing to lose. The kids love the show and they know what’s going on now they’re a bit older, and I would love to make them proud. I filled out the application form on my iPad and whispered the news to Craig so that the kids didn’t know.
I wasn’t in the best place because I still felt really big and frumpy, but I missed performing and at that time I couldn’t see another way to try and break into the industry. I was enjoying being a prison officer and if it was what I ended up doing for the rest of my life then so be it, but I had to give singing one last go.
Just after I applied I had a bit of a windfall thanks to a PPI claim, so that April Craig and I booked to take the kids to Florida on holiday. In Hollywood Studios in Disney World they had a competition called the American Idol Experience. I thought it would be a laugh to enter, and the kids would get to see me sing. I was wearing shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops, so I didn’t look terribly glamorous, but I must have done something right because I kept getting through the heats into the next round. By the end of the day there were five of us in the final with 3,000 people watching. I sang ‘Get Here’ by Oleta Adams and ended up winning the whole bloody thing! I was given a golden ticket that enabled you to jump the queue and go straight to the Bootcamp stage of American Idol on TV. When I was walking around the park afterwards people were asking for my autograph and having photos taken with me and all sorts. It was so bizarre. It’s incredible to look back now and realise that none of those people would have known I would go on to win The X Factor in the UK.
