Alexandra Burke has been seeing the ghost of her late mother.
The 29-year-old pop star was left devastated over the summer when her mum Melissa Bell – who was one of the lead singers of the R&B band Soul II Soul – tragically passed away from a lengthy battle with kidney failure, but she has admitted her death is still something she’s coming to terms with because she’s been seeing her sitting in the audience with her brother every week when she performs on ‘Strictly Come Dancing.’
Speaking to HELLO! magazine, she said: ”I think mum is watching over me … When the camera panned to the audience, I saw my mum sitting with my brother and I choked up. Then it hit me that she wasn’t there.”
And the time she saw her mum’s figure sitting in the audience happened to be the week Alexandra score a 39 out of 40 for her Jive to Tina Turner’s ‘Proud Mary’.
She explained: ”I can’t even begin to describe how it felt losing mum and I’m still grieving. I’m feeling all kind of weird feelings. One minute I’m really happy and then I’ll see a picture of smell something that reminds me of her and it takes me all the way back. Losing my mum so young made me question my faith in God and so many things because I was completely in denial with how sick she was.”
Alexandra found out her mum had kidney failure when she auditioned for ‘The X Factor’, which she went on to win, in 2008 and has admitted she’d love nothing more than to go back to her routes once the ballroom and latin show has wrapped up.
She said: ”I feel like I can’t get stressed anymore over the little things when the biggest thing in my life has happened. I want to get back in the studio within the next week. I’m yearning to sing. I was 20 when I won ‘The X Factor’. I’m not singing about bad boys any more, I’m singing about being heartbroken. That, for me, is real.”