FEATURE:
Sobering
PHOTO CREDIT: Bonnier Books
Lucy Spraggan’s Memoir, Process: Finding My Way Through, and the Darker Side of Noughties Celebrity Culture
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A story that really provoked shock…
and questions recently, Lucy Spraggan has revealed that she was a victim of sexual assault when she was in The X Factor. The reality music show has given the music world some big artists. Even though there is a lot of sensationalism and it is quite ruthless, it has also been a platform for current stars to highlight their brilliance. In today’s scene, it does like a little bit of a queue jump when it comes to making it into the industry – with so many artists struggling to get heard, talent shows are a fast-track that is not always deserved. One of the best artists that has come out of The X Factor is the amazing Lucy Spraggan. The Canterbury-born artist’s revelation in an interview that she was raped during her time on the ITV show led to so many people coming out in support. It was a shocking thing to read. It makes you wonder about safeguarding on talent shows, and whether women especially are protected. On a show where these hopeful artists are looking to crack into the music industry, there is that sense that they can be exploited and taken advantage of. After Spraggan stated she was raped whilst on the show, it is clear that there needs to be changes. People definitely need to explain how this happened and why she was left to cope with it almost on her own! Spraggan’s memoir, Process: Finding My Way Through, explores her time on The X Factor, where she candidly and bravely talks about what happened. You can pre-order the book here. Spragggan has talked about her relationship with alcohol and finding sobriety. After being raped by a hotel party during Rylan Clark's (who has been a great friend and support to her) twenty-fifth birthday at the Mayfair nightclub in 2012, it has obviously had a catastrophic impact on her. She has had to deal with this trauma and process what happened. For years, when asked about her departure from the show – Spraggan said it was due to illness that she left -, she had to cover what happened. Revealing such a huge thing could have had this devastating effect. She has had this successful recording career and, at all stages, this horrific event has not been known. I wonder whether she ever felt secure and comfortable talking to someone on The X Factor about what happened. It seems like there was this culture where the artists were almost seen as commodities. How much personal care and safeguarding happened? You do wonder whether other artists experienced something similar to Lucy Spraggan.
I shall come on to asking what needs to happen going forward. Things that so many people have raised and pointed out in the past day or two. There is an interview from The Guardian that has been highlighted and is causing a lot of discussion. It is shocking to hear what Lucy Spragggan went thorough in 2021. Before that, I wanted to bring in parts of an interview from The Irish Times, where Spraggan was discussing her career and forthcoming album, Balance. This interview was back in April. This was before we knew about what occurred in 2012:
“Square peg, round hole. You could see it immediately when Lucy Spraggan stood in front of the judges for the first time for the ninth (2012) edition of The X Factor. In the context of the reality contest, her audition song was also an unconventional choice, an original song no less – Last Night. The judges were charmed if a tad flummoxed – where was the version of an Adele or a Beyoncé song that auditionees usually belted out?
As the first contestant in the show’s history to have had a UK Top 40 single (Last Night) and album (Top Room at the Zoo) before the live shows aired, it was clear that Spraggan had stepped into the wrong lane. She stayed on the show for several more weeks, interspersing original material (Tea and Toast, Mountains) with covers (Maroon 5′s Moves like Jagger, Kanye West’s Gold Digger) but neither her heart nor head were in it and she walked away.
Did she feel that she didn’t match The X Factor’s commercially strategic view of what pop stars should be like? Too right, she did. Was she too niche for such a crowd-pleasing audience? Too right, she was. It is, she admits, a much bigger topic to chat about right now (she goes into it in lengthier detail in her forthcoming memoir, Process), but she says she played the game somewhat more than she might have thought.
“When you go into something like X Factor, the powers of the company that runs it and how you’re treated, the bubble you’re in telling you how it’s your biggest opportunity and how you must do certain things in order to move forward – that’s just the way it is. Looking back, I think I stuck to my guns quite a lot, and as for that square peg, round hole feeling, well, that’s me for the entire time I’ve been in music.” Spraggan’s voice sags a bit here, half-resigned, half-regretful. “But, yes, rolling over in the show? I did that quite a lot.”
Fast forward 10 years, and the songwriter has long since put that experience behind her. She has had other personal issues, of course, but she has rallied in an admirable and instructive way. After steering a course through a separation, and giving up her dependence on alcohol, she has embraced a dedicated health and fitness regime that has, she says, transformed her life.
“When sobriety marched through my front door I discovered a newfound respect for myself, compassion for myself, and the realisation that I enjoy things other than alcohol, other than music. Being sober introduced all of that into my life. Alcohol is a super-easy way to make you feel good – you know, let’s have another one, why not – but when I took that away my body was asking where was it going to get dopamine now? For me, exercise is such a huge part of my life because I’m being nourished with it.”
Spraggan also engaged with therapy, but finding a therapist that worked for her was not straightforward.
“There are all different kinds of therapists out there and it takes people time to find one that works for them, but as in any relationship – especially in a relationship where you have to share a lot of personal details – they’re not always going to work. The difference between therapists and friends is the level of professionalism.
“Friends and family always try to provide solutions based on what they know about you and what they build their life experiences on, but a good therapist will offer you not necessarily a solution but methods of coping, of thinking, that have been studied for years. They will offer you the ability to reconstruct the way you navigate things, and help you to be less defensive and less reactive, whereas people close to you can often inspire defensiveness and/or reactiveness because they know so much about you!
“For me, therapy is having an entirely different dynamic, a professional dynamic, with somebody. Vulnerability is one of the things that being in therapy has helped me with and to learn about, and that’s been great.”
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.
Since The X Factor, she says, she has been surrounded by the music industry, “which despite being a constant in my life, can be a very lonely place. As with anyone, you use whatever makes you avoid looking at yourself, so when touring was removed I was left with this person – me – and I had to work out exactly who and what I was. As an artist, you can confuse working every single day with being productive, but over the past few years, I have found that real productivity requires you to be a little bit more restrained with your time.”
It helped that during the pandemic she lived in the northern UK countryside “about 30 minutes’ drive from a supermarket, so it was me and lots of fields and trees”. Songs for her forthcoming album, Balance, were written during this enforced period of seclusion and while some might consider them niche there’s little doubt as to their confessional nature.
“They’re all about the development of myself and other stuff I have learned or observed over the years,” she says. One of those observations is that she will persevere through anything. “Longevity in music – or any area, for that matter – doesn’t exist without perseverance, so clinging on to it is crucial. What’s hilarious is that now I think I’m a professional because everybody else thinks I am! However, in reality, I just persist”.
I want to come to the interview from The Guardian. Lucy Spraggan is extremely brave during the interview. Talking about such a hard time must have been hugely emotional but also cathartic in a sense. It is upsetting learning about the effect the rape had on her in terms of her mental health. Fans often asked her why she left The X Factor. She did not want to be defined as ‘that girl’. It is a fascinating interview that I would urge everyone to read:
“Having successfully commodified herself for the cameras, Spraggan played her role with gusto. She soon found an ally in another queer contestant, Rylan Clark, and together they revelled in causing mischief – staging unsanctioned breakouts from the luxury London hotel where contestants were holed up, and being papped pretending to flag down a stationary bus after a night out. Their antics attracted welcome press for the show. “We were always told to tell the publicist anything that worried or concerned us,” she writes. “But once you did, as if by magic, it was those stories that ended up being printed [in the tabloids].” Mostly, she writes, it was harmless.
In the fourth week of the live shows, Spraggan and Clark were told by production that they were being kicked out of the hotel, ostensibly for bad behaviour. “I remember thinking, ‘What? We haven’t even done anything!’ Nothing that would’ve warranted being chucked out of the hotel. Rylan is the most polite, respectful person in the world and he tried to get to the bottom of it, and got the impression that it was all helpful to our storyline [for the show].” While the other contestants would remain on a private floor at the Corinthia just off Whitehall, with 24-hour security provided by the show, Spraggan and Clark were exiled to a hotel on Edgware Road.
PHOTO CREDIT: Laura McCluskey/The Guardian
Soon after, Clark celebrated his 25th birthday at Mayfair nightclub Mahiki. The drinks were free and unlimited, and X Factor crew, journalists and paparazzi were all there to capture the ensuing chaos. “By this stage, I knew my role: get drunk, do something funny, appear in the headlines the next day,” Spraggan writes. Pictures duly appeared of her picking up a beer bottle with her teeth and downing it, hands free. Some of the production team were drinking, too. “It was inappropriate for anybody – including contestants – to be drunk,” she says. “How can you fulfil your duty of care when free alcohol is involved?”
Spraggan ended up passing out. She was escorted back to the hotel by a member of the production team, where a hotel porter offered to help get Spraggan back to her room. As they left, the porter flipped the security latch on her door to prevent it locking behind them. Some time later, Clark checked in on an unconscious Spraggan and made sure that her door was locked when he left. His decision meant that when the porter later returned to Spraggan’s room in order to attack her, he had to use a traceable keycard. “I woke up the next day with this sense of sheer dread,” she says. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt that level of confusion since. I knew that I’d been raped, but I could not process that. So I put my clothes on and went into autopilot.”
Clark was the first person whom Spraggan told about her rape, and he became her fiercest advocate (they remain friends today). The police were called by the production team, who took Spraggan to a specialist unit. An arrest was quickly made thanks to the keycard, but she believes that the production team was “unprepared” to deal with what had happened.
Spraggan’s mother recalls standing in the street outside a restaurant when a member of the production team informed her over the phone that her daughter had been raped. The news was quickly leaked to the press, Spraggan believes by the Met police. Her right to anonymity prevented her from being named, and cyber experts were employed to delete rumours circulating on Twitter and comment sections. During her attacker’s trial the next year, the gallery was full of journalists, but reports referred obliquely to a “television star”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Laura McCluskey/The Guardian
The few days after the assault passed in a blur, and the side-effects of Pep (Pep – post-exposure prophylaxis – a drug that, if taken within 72 hours of exposure, prevents HIV) made Spraggan too unwell to consider continuing with the competition. She remembers being initially sequestered in a room on the 11th floor of the Park Lane Hilton. “That evening, I had to relentlessly shake away the constant pull to go towards the balcony doors,” she writes. “‘All of this could go away so quickly,’ I thought.”
Initially, Spraggan wanted to make public the reason for her exit from the competition. “At first I said, ‘Just tell them what happened.’ But I realised straight away that it wasn’t going to be so simple. I remember various people saying, ‘You have your whole career ahead of you and you can’t retract this.’” [Independent privacy and criminal lawyers, and the police, advised her of the implications of deciding to waive her anonymity.]
Tulisa Contostavlos, the X Factor judge assigned to mentor Spraggan, paid her a visit. In the book, Spraggan writes that, “I was grateful that she’d come to see me, but I felt like I had no independent advice.” Contostavlos said how sorry she was, before telling her: “This will stay with you for the rest of your life.” I’m curious to know whether Spraggan interpreted her comment to mean that the trauma would stay with her (as with any survivor), or that speaking out would mar her career? “I got the impression that she was saying that it would be a stain. But I don’t know if she was regurgitating something someone else had told her to say. I had no idea until I started writing the book that she was only a couple of years older than me. It was fucking inappropriate that she was called into that situation.” [A representative for Contostavlos told us that she visited Spraggan of her own accord and was “referring to the trauma Lucy would personally feel”.]
These days, Spraggan works hard to maintain her mental health. “People say, ‘Is it your sobriety?’ But my sobriety is me, it’s my choices. Once you feel worthy, you see things for what they are. You see success for what it is, because it’s so subjective. At one point, success for me meant getting out of bed. Then it was playing Glastonbury. Now it’s being a lesbian succeeding in the music industry. I’m really happy with the things I’ve achieved, and I have to attribute my successes to me. I’m not just ‘that girl’.” She lives in Manchester with her girlfriend and her dog – “Eve and Steve” – although she’s eyeing a move to the countryside. In August, she will release her seventh album, and will support Robbie Williams on his next tour.
More than anything, she wants to make sure other contestants are offered more support. “I have no interest in tearing anything down. Rebuilding myself taught me that the most powerful thing you can do is build. My goal is for the introduction of an industry standard where reality-production companies take a percentage of their budget and deposit that into a mental health pension scheme that production staff, presenters and contestants can access for the rest of their lives.” As well as Flack, she refers to Sophie Gradon and Mike Thalassitis, two Love Island contestants who killed themselves after appearing on the show, and Steve Dymond, a guest on The Jeremy Kyle Show, who also took his own life. “Let’s put some more preventive measures in place to stop this happening. Let’s stop people dying, let’s stop people being raped. I’m an expert in being a reality TV contestant and having a shit time. So if anybody would like to have a conversation about positive change based on my negative experience – let’s do it”.
Whilst it was unprecedented and there was no ideal way for The X Factor to deal with this, you wonder whether they were thinking more of their ratings and the smoothness of the production, rather than connecting and empathising with Spraggan as a person! Maybe feeling like she was partying too hard or was showing a lack of discipline, it is horrible to imagine what was going through her mind in the direct aftermath of the rape. She was on the show to showcase her songwriting talent and originality. Someone who wanted to go further in the industry and connect with people around the world. Talent shows were there to provide this opportunity, but you get the feeling that there was not a great human element. No sufficient measures to ensure that the contestants are kept safe and there is that duty of care. It is the aftercare that seemed to be lacking. Whether an artist was struggling with a mental health issue or had suffered an attack, was there a team in place to ensure that that person was taken seriously and taken care of?! It seems like Spraggen had to shoulder so much herself. At a precarious time when she did want to take he music further but also had to think about her own wellbeing, at such a young age, she was processing something life-changing and traumatic. It is obviously not her fault of The X Factor that the rape happened, but there is that feeling she was let down. In the years since, Spraggan has rebuilt and gone through recovery, though it is a pain that never goes away. From finding sobriety to divorce from her wife, one of our finest artists has had some challenges and huge life changes. The strength she has shown to discuss her experiences will open doors and conversations. I do think we will hear from other reality show contestants who have either been through something similar or have experienced a trauma.
Music talent shows are still on our screens, so it is going to be hugely important that Lucy Spraggan’s words resonate and lead to change. To ensure that there is aftercare and that there is more focus and priority on the people rather than the process and production. Lucy Spraggan prepares for Process: Finding My Way Through to hit the shelves. You can read an extract here. There will be new music coming soon too. It is a big time in her career. There has been a lot of support and sympathy for her online since she revealed what happened to her in 2012. There has also been a lot of anger at The X Factor and reality shows in general. How Spraggan only feels comfortable (enough) discussing her rape over a decade on from the event. The fact that was suicidal and had addiction issues is sobering and shocking in equal measures. We are thankful she is with us still and will inspire others. It shouldn’t have come to the point where she was only able to talk about her trauma so far down the road. There needed to be that network and safe space directly after the event. Wherever support was implemented for the show, it doesn’t feel sufficient. The fear she wouldn’t be believed or that the press would blow the story up and that would be the end of her career – before it had even really started. On Thursday, one of the most important music memoirs in years hits the shelves. Process: Finding My Way Through sounds like it will be…
A phenomenally powerful read.