16/11/06
By Polly Dunbar
SITTING at the reception desk in her local solicitors’ office – a job for which she had left the nearby pizza parlour – Leona Lewis would habitually check to see if anyone was watching before drifting into a fantasy world.
In her imagination the headset she wore to take calls became a microphone and the office was transformed into Wembley Arena, packed with thousands of fans screaming her name and waiting for her to sing.
Trying to keep her powerful voice down, she would whisper the songs she had written, pretending she was belting them out in front of a rapt audience. Then the phone would ring and bring her back down to earth with a jolt.
“Dreaming of performing on a stage in front of thousands of people kept me going,” she says. “I just longed to be able to do my music every day and be recognised for it.”
Little did she know that months later her dream would come true. On last weekend’s episode of The X Factor, Leona’s phenomenal performance of the Elton John hit Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word earned her a standing ovation and didn’t just make her the odds-on favourite to win – it revealed her to be a sure-fire singing sensation in the making.
Express