Alesha Dixon has told how she had to overcome her father’s prediction that she wouldn’t find success as a singer in Britain because she is black.
Dixon, 34, was born to an English mother and Jamaican father, who split when she was four years old. She went on to find fame with girl group Mis-Teeq before going solo and moving into television, becoming a judge on Strictly Come Dancing and Britain’s Got Talent.
In an interview with ES Magazine, she said: “I remember the day I said to my dad that I wanted to be in a girl group. Bless his soul, he said, ‘What makes you think you’re going to succeed? Black people from this country don’t succeed’. And I remember saying to my dad at 15, 16, ‘I’m not going to base my decisions in life based on other people’s successes or failures. I have to make my own path’.
“When Mis-Teeq broke through, you could argue there weren’t that many black artists in the UK. That’s why it felt special. It felt like something that was ours.” Dixon is about to release a new single with Ashley Walters, the former So Solid Crew member Asher D.
Read the full interview in Friday's ES Magazine - free with the Evening Standard.
