Tulisa Contostavlos has opened up about being arrested and facing years in prison after being set up by a journalist.
The former X Factor judge is one of ten familiar faces who are braving the Australian outback in I’m a Celebrity to face a series of gruelling and nauseating challenges. So far, the star has opened up about being celibate for three years, being a demisexual, and the unlikely origin of her band’s name, N-Dubz.
On Wednesday night (20 November), Contostavlos shared her experience of facing prison for an alleged drug deal after an elaborate, expensive, and months-long ruse by an undercover journalist.
Confiding in Strictly’s Oti Mabuse, the musician said that the number 13 was special to her as “a lot of things happen to me, either on the 13th or the year 2013.”
Mabuse asked what she meant, to which Contostavlos explained her involvement with the since-dubbed “Fake Sheikh”.
“2013 was the year I was set up by a British newspaper, for concern in the selling of class A drugs,” she said.
“The guy’s name was Mahmood and basically, I was approached by a big movie company and they sent me a tweet or a DM from their official account to audition me for a movie role.”
She explained that she had been offered £3.5m for the role adding, “I was having meetings with these producers, they flew me out to Las Vegas, first class flights, limousines, five-star hotels.”
Contostavlos says she was told that because she had no experience in acting, the only way that she would be accepted for the work would be if she was “the girl in the role”, in other words, “a bad girl from London”.
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Eager to please, she says she was involved in months of meetings, “talking absolute crazy nonsense”, and every time she was told, “We need some drugs”.
The singer, who has previously said she had never taken any drugs other than weed, provided the number of a friend who was an aspiring movie producer, hoping to “make a hook up as well for that person”.
She said, “The long story short is they ended up ordering £800’s worth of cocaine from the number that I had given them. Then before I knew it, I was being arrested in the concern of the selling of Class A drugs and I was facing four years in prison.”
The Sun journalist Mazher Mahmood claimed to “expose” Tulisa for arranging the drug deal, but after the case fell apart in court following the help of a driver she had shared her anti-drugs feelings with, Mahmood was charged with perverting the course of justice.
“My life fell apart,” she said, as she revealed she lost “all my endorsements” over the incident.
“He was facing the same amount of time that I was facing and he ended up going to prison and serving 18 months,” she told Mabuse.
The Strictly star later said of the musician, “I feel really sorry that she’s had to go through so much, you can see that there’s a strength in her, there’s just an amazing woman, that every time you knock her down, she’s going to come back fighting”.
New episodes of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! air on ITV1 and ITVX every night at 9pm.