Lucy Spraggan was a 20-year-old gigging musician when she was scouted by producers to compete on The X Factor. This was 2012, and Simon Cowell’s primetime star-maker was at the peak of its influence, having produced One Direction and Little Mix in its previous two series. Spraggan became the first contestant to perform her own songs and play an instrument. Her audition – an ode to “beer fear” called Last Night (“Last night I told ya I loved ya / Woke up, blamed it on the vodka”) – was the world’s fourth most-watched YouTube video of that year, and she became the UK’s most Googled artist. Lily Allen tweeted that Spraggan reminded her of a young version of herself, and she was the bookies’ odds-on favourite to win the show. Viewers voted her through the first three live shows before being told that she had left the competition due to illness. Only, she wasn’t ill.
Eleven years later, Spraggan, now 31, is finally ready to talk about why she disappeared. We meet in a light-filled attic studio, and though she later admits that she is incredibly nervous, she appears measured and resolute, choosing her words with the care of someone who has spent a great deal of time weighing them. We’re here to discuss her new memoir, in which she reveals that she was raped during the production of The X Factor, and the devastating impact that this had on the subsequent decade of her life. “My working title for the book was Are You That Girl?,” she says. “Because for years I was terrified of being known as the girl that that happened to. I was deeply, chronically ashamed. Now I understand that what happened wasn’t my decision, it was out of my hands. And in order for me to rebuild myself and move on, I needed to tell the truth.”
