Tulisa Contostavlos attempted suicide with pills and alcohol after Fake Sheikh drugs sting left her deeply depressed
Mazher Mahmood, also known as 'the Fake Sheikh', is now being investigated by the Crown Prosecution Service
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Your support makes all the difference.Tulisa Contostavlos, the former X Factor judge, has revealed that she tried to commit suicide last year after she was charged with supplying Class A drugs.
In a BBC documentary being broadcast tonight, the singer tells for the first time how she took a potentially lethal combination of pills and alcohol following a sting by The Sun on Sunday’s Mazher Mahmood.
Seen in the film sobbing hysterically as she describes the “evil” reporters behind the newspaper’s operation, she says: “They’ve f**ked me up good and proper. They’re killing me, they’re killing me, they’re fucking killing me.
“I just want my life back,” she says. “They’ve ruined me. This would never have happened unless they created the situation. They made it happen.”
The case against the former N-Dubz singer was based on a sting by The Sun on Sunday, in which journalists posing as film producers approached Contostavlos and flew her to Los Angeles and Las Vegas on the promise of a role in a film with Leonardo DiCaprio.
The paper published its findings in a front-page exclusive under the headline “Tulisa’s Cocaine Deal Shame” on 2 June 2013, but the trial was thrown out of court last week after the undercover reporter who persuaded her to boast that she could supply him with cocaine was found to have lied in court.
Mahmood, also known as “the Fake Sheikh”, is now being investigated by the Crown Prosecution Service, which is scrutinising the accuracy of evidence given by him in more than 30 previous criminal cases.
The BBC Three documentary Tulisa: The Price of Fame follows the singer from the moment news of the drug deal broke through what became a year-long ordeal, and includes webcam footage filmed by Contostavlos.
Speaking after her attempted suicide in December 2013, she described how she was an “emotional wreck” when she learned she would be formally charged with the offence, saying she spent hours screaming and crying with her cousin and fellow N-Dubz member Dappy, before “necking” a cocktail of pills and alcohol.
“I’d had a drink so everything felt even more intensified,” she said. “ I don’t even know what I was planning to do.”
A friend called an ambulance but Contostavlos refused to go to hospital. “Luckily I was just drowsy,” she said. “I woke up the next day just numb.”
Describing the feelings that led her to that point, the singer said: “I don’t have the energy any more to do this and even if I get through it, then what? I’m just going to be drained as a person.
“I’m going to be numb by the end of this. I don’t know how much of me I’m going to have left. And I was like, shall I just end it? Shall I just get on with it and just never have to feel like this ever again?”
Contostavlos has spoken openly in the past about her teenage suicide attempts. The singer, who grew up on a Camden council estate, overdosed on pills aged 14 and cut her wrists when she was 17.
As media interest in the case grew, Contostavlos left her £4.5m mansion in Hertfordshire and moved into in a small flat in north London, after she began to feel unsafe in her own home.
“I am going to sell that house,” she says in the documentary. “After everything that’s happened, I don’t feel safe there at all. I don’t even want to drive back there to pick up my stuff because I’m afraid that someone will follow me.”