Charlotte Church has detailed her nan’s reaction to her media coverage as a partying teenager during a sit-down interview with Kate Garraway for ITV ’s Life Stories.
The Welsh singer and Masked Singer finalist, 35, details her meteoric rise and the effects of reaching tabloid fame at such a young age.
Her big musical break came when she first sang Andrew Lloyd Webber's Pie Jesu over the telephone on This Morning aged 11 - which she later sang at media tycoon Rupert Murdoch's 1999 wedding - and then went on to perform on ITV's Big, Big Talent Show.
Life Stories host Kate Garraway, who has taken over the ITV talk show role from Piers Morgan, asked the musical powerhouse about her decision to move out from her parents’ home aged 16, which is when she also left school.
Charlotte said: “It was a big thing and not many 16-year-olds were in the position I was.
“I knew financially I could do it and I think a lot of 16-year-olds would make that choice if they thought that they could - would get a groovy flat with their friends.”
Kate added this was also when Charlotte started smoking, noting it wasn’t a “great idea” for a singer to take up the habit.
Charlotte agreed, saying it was something she did out of peer pressure, then going on to talk about her independent teenage years in Cardiff.
She said: “You've got to put me in my context, which is an impressionable young girl who's trying to fit in. There was no conscious rebellion.
“The only thing I rebelled against was celebrity. My rebellion was, ‘I will be normal, I will have this life I'm supposed to have’. This life of Charlotte in Cardiff with her friends.
“This whole showbusiness nonsense, which is a facade, isn't my life. By hook or by crook I was going to have that life, no matter what the papers said.”
She added: “My nan used to say, ‘Oh please love, if you have a drink with your friends, just stay home and have a drink with your friends. Why do you have to go out clubbing? I've got to go to church on a Sunday. Why do you have to wear that? Can't you just wear something a little bit below the knee?’
“And I would be like, ‘No, I've got to do exactly what I want’.”
Kate Garraway's Life Stories featuring Charlotte Church airs tonight (Thursday) at 9pm on ITV and ITV Hub.
