Michelle McManus is celebrating 19 years since finding fame.
The Scottish singer posted to her Twitter account on Tuesday as she shared a throwback image showing the moment she discovered she had won Pop Idol in 2003. In the image, Ant and Dec held her hand as she fought back tears.
She simply captioned it: "19 years" and followed it up with a red love heart emoji. Some of her 25,000 followers reminisced with her as they looked back on the victorious moment and what has followed since.
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Fiona said: "I remember it vividly. Your performance of O Holy Night in that final is the best I’ve ever heard. Gave me goosebumps."
Lauren said: "I remember this so clearly! My mum was out for dinner with her pals and we accidentally didn’t record you winning… there was an argument in the house that night!" Agnes said: "I'm still paying off the phone bill! What we doing for the 20th anniversary next year?"
Pop Idol and what came after
Michelle rose to fame after appearing on - and winning - Pop Idol in 2003. Her debut single, All This Time, went to number one in January 2004, but later that year, BMG dropped her from the label.
Michelle said her success came too early for her to be accepted for her voice alone. She previously told the Daily Record: "It wasn't the right time in 2003, that kind of plus-size acceptance and revolution wasn't to come until much later on."
Her win prompted Pop Idol judge Pete Waterman, who had criticised her throughout, to storm off the show. Michelle continued: "I really respect Pete Waterman but he was a kind of dinosaur in the sense of he just didn't want to see forward.
"It was too much for him to take that somebody who looked like me could be a pop star and sadly he was kind of right unfortunately. It wasn't about the voice, your image did really matter, and that's kind of why my career didn't go anywhere at the time because they didn't know what to do with me."
In the years that followed, Michelle appeared on a number of TV shows, including Gillian McKeith's You Are What You Eat. Later, she co-presented STV show The Hour, before appearing on Loose Women as a guest panellist in 2018.
Family life
Earlier this year, Michelle shared the news she had given birth to a baby boy. The 41-year-old took to Twitter to reveal she and husband Jeff Nimmo welcomed their second son into the world in January.
Revealing the baby's name, she said: "Please say hello to Nicholas Peter Nimmo. Thank you for completing our family and our world. Love Mummy, Daddy & Harry."
The pregnancy hasn't been without its hiccups, with Michelle testing positive for covid while expecting. At the time, she said she was "so very grateful" she had been double jabbed. Thankfully, she recovered quickly and gave birth to a healthy baby a month later.
Late-night bar assault
Michelle was left with an injured jaw after being attacked in a busy bar on a Saturday night in 2017. At the time, the singer and TV presenter said she was assaulted by a man she doesn’t know when he hit her with his guitar case near the Linen Bar in Glasgow.
She took to Twitter to say: “When your life is amazing but then a man you don't know assaults you for no reason. #whatdoesntkillyou xxx”
When a fan asked her what happened, Michelle replied to say: “For no reason he battered me across the face with his guitar case” before adding “Thankyou so much for all your kind messages. Still trying to process what happened to me last night. The police were fantastic xxx”.
Derek McArthur was fined £350 after being found guilty of assault at a trial at Glasgow's Justice of the Peace Court in March 2019.
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