Tulisa is laying it all on the table in her new memoir Judgement

It was 2012, and Tulisa Contostavlos had every reason to believe that things for her were looking up. She had the number one single in the UK, was putting together her debut album and was getting ready to return for a second season judging on the most popular TV show in the country.

Alright, she’d taken a few knocks in the press and online – we’re talking about the 2010s after all, when the tabloids reigned supreme and social media was in its infancy, with people still finding it a novelty to be able to tweet whatever they wanted about previously-untouchable celebrities – but for all she may have had her haters, she also had a loyal base of supporters and famous friends.

Two years later, Tulisa found herself in a very different situation, speaking to reporters outside of Southwark Crown Court, at the end of a legal case she said had “ruined” her life, after the man who first brought about the charges, The Sun journalist Mazher Mahmood, was found to have lied during the proceedings (he was later found guilty of perjury).

It was an arduous ordeal for the chart-topping singer, who had suffered damage to her reputation, finances and mental health, and lost friends, work opportunities and, of course, money throughout the traumatic experience. While all of that went on, she was still being hounded by the press, and picked apart on social media over everything from her background to her appearance. At her lowest point, she tried twice to take her own life.

Understandably, this is a period in Tulisa’s life she’s chosen to not revisit often. That is, until she put together her new book Judgement, exploring the case in candid detail like never before, based on diary entries she recorded at the time, as well as diving deeper into the classism and misogyny that she was faced throughout her time in the spotlight.

Tulisa outside Southwark Crown Court in July 2014, after the collapse of her trial

Tulisa says it’s “straight anxiety” that stopped her telling her story before this point. In fact, conversations first began about a book deal right after the court case concluded, and have picked up again at numerous points over the last decade, only for her to not pursue them any further.

“I was not ready for the anxiety that would come with my personal life being out there,” she tells HuffPost UK. “I didn’t want all the headlines that were going to come with it. There’s so much information in the book, and personal, personal stuff.”

Eventually, though, she realised that she couldn’t let what she describes as “this great fucking story” go untold. “What have you gone through all of that for if there’s no purpose off the back of it?” she reasoned. “Like, you can’t die without releasing that book.”

Most people’s introduction to Tulisa was as a member of N-Dubz, the hip-hop trio she formed as a teenager alongside her cousin Dappy and fellow performer Fazer. By the time N-Dubz reached number one in 2009, they’d already been hard at work on the band for the better part of a decade. A string of hits came afterwards, including multiple top 10s and collaborations with the likes of Tinchy Stryder, Mr Hudson and Skepta.

Still, for all of N-Dubz’s chart success, their growing fanbase and all the fun they were having together as a group, Tulisa recalls that they still struggled to be taken seriously by the media during this period, for reasons she now puts down to “classism and culture clash”.

“The press just hated us,” she recalls. “They treated us like a joke. Three chavs from Camden, up to trouble again, we were just that… the naughty three kids.

“We were making platinum albums at the time, but the ‘adults’ that were the journalists at the time were just snubbing their noses up.”

Dappy, Tulisa and Fazer of N-Dubz performing together in 2009

As a young woman in the music industry (for much of N-Dubz’s early success, she was still in her late teens), Tulisa says most of the misogyny she encountered during that time was “in the meetings”.

“So like, in the industry itself,” she clarifies. “Behind the scenes, where you come across a lot of wankers. You know, older men, whether it’s in the label or wherever.

“Because I always had two guys either side of me, people just wouldn’t mess with me like that. In that sense, it might have protected me. But to be fair, even if they did, I was very outspoken.”

“Where it became really relevant to me was when I went on X Factor,” she continues. “Then, I started noticing… you get to that side of the industry, you start meeting a lot of bigwigs, and you’re like, ‘ah, OK, I see what’s going on here’. The higher up in the system you go, the bigger the misogyny gets.”

N-Dubz had brought Tulisa a huge amount of success, especially for someone so young, but when she was cast as a judge on The X Factor – then at the height of its cultural peak – taking over a spot on the panel previously occupied by national treasure Cheryl, her profile exploded even further.

“Part of me had this really older head on my shoulders, I thought I knew everything and I was wise for my age,” she says of accepting the role at just 22 years old (something she describes as “fucking nuts” in hindsight). “And then, another side of me kind of felt like a big kid that had just been led through the back door. I’d be sat on the panel like, ‘how did I get here?’.”

“You talk to 22-year-olds now, and you’re like, ‘imagine you doing that’. I just want to wrap them up in cotton wool,” she notes.

Tulisa strikes her signature pose during an X Factor live show in 2011

Referring to herself in her X Factor days, Tulisa admits: “I don’t know who that is. I give her hugs and love, you know, and I’m proud of her for everything she’s got through and everything she achieved. But I’m like… a completely different human.”

When Tulisa was confirmed........

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