Daring to Dream (6 page)

I got a bit down being back home because it wasn’t exactly
fun
, but my mum kept me going. I couldn’t sign on because I’d resigned from my job, but I was confident enough that I would get myself another one. Soon enough I got a job doing market research again and I started hanging around with an old friend of mine, Julie Bushell, who is the daughter of the journalist Garry Bushell. At that time Garry was doing a TV show called
Bushell On The Box
, which was filmed in his front room. I used to love going around there because sometimes famous people would come round to film the show and Julie and I would always sneak downstairs and try to catch a glimpse of them. I answered their house phone once and it was Dale Winton; I was so bloody excited!

My dream was still to sing, so I started going to auditions at places like Pineapple Dance Studios in Covent Garden or Danceworks, which was just off Oxford Street. They were always holding auditions for something or other and I used to go along for fun, clutching my trusty CD of backing tracks. Sometimes I didn’t even know what I was auditioning for –
it could have been a pole-dancing club in Timbuktu – but I’d go to get experience and get used to being knocked back. I wanted to become strong and resilient and learn not to let the disappointments get me down. That way, I figured, when something I really
did
want came up I could go along and not be afraid of being told ‘no’. I know it sounds mad but for some reason the knockbacks gave me more confidence and I wanted to be able to walk into a room and give off the impression that I felt like I deserved to be there.

I went for an audition for a Disney Cruise Liner once and there were all of these people there who looked like Pocahontas with long dark hair, or Prince Charming with a big blonde flick. I arrived in jeans and hoodie and as I got nearer to the front I panicked because I didn’t look like
anyone
from a Disney movie. Princess Chav, maybe? My group got called in and I thought about edging my way out and doing a runner, but it was so busy there was no way I could go anywhere
but
the audition room. They must have wondered what the hell I was doing there. I looked like someone’s weird sister who had come along for a laugh. Funnily enough I didn’t get offered the role of Princess Jasmine.

One day Julie told she was going for an audition to be an entertainer on a Thompson cruise ship, and asked me if I’d go with her. I had trials for a woman’s football team at the Arsenal training ground on the same day, so I was really torn. I still loved football and I’d never stopped playing,
but I didn’t enjoy it
quite
as much as I enjoyed singing. I thought about it long and hard and decided that I could go and try out for the football team anytime, but the cruise ship sounded like a great opportunity. Also because I wasn’t
desperate
for the job, I knew I wasn’t going to be a shaking mess and I’d probably end up having quite a laugh.

The auditions were being held at Danceworks and when Julie and I arrived there were hundreds of people waiting to be seen. We were all waiting in the restaurant area and we could hear everyone else auditioning. I started talking to some of the other hopefuls and because we were waiting around for so long I went into full on Bluecoat mode and started telling jokes and doing Frank Spencer impressions. I was pretty cocky and I was making everyone laugh by basically being a bit of a show-off.

When my name was called I suddenly found myself feeling quite nervous. Maybe I did really want the job after all? I sang a Mariah Carey song – although for the life of me I can’t remember which one – and afterwards I went back to the restaurant where we all waited to hear if we’d got through to the next stage or not. I was so happy when my name was called, but also slightly terrified because we were expected to dance in the second round, and following routines really wasn’t my strong point. I can put my leg behind my head, which I’m quite proud of, but I’m not sure that’s a good skill to have on a posh cruise ship!

I wasn’t the world’s
worst
dancer back then, but I had no
professional experience (unless you call dancing around in an ostrich suit professional experience?). There were girls there in leotards and legwarmers doing the splits to warm up, and I was wearing one of my football tracksuits and trainers looking like I was planning on running a marathon.

I went into the audition room feeling like such a fool. These gorgeous girls were pirouetting around me, and being a footballer I wasn’t the most graceful person in the world. We were shown a dance routine and we all had to keep up with the instructor. I was going the wrong way and getting the moves completely wrong and in my head I was thinking, ‘Never mind. I’ve got all of my football gear with me. Maybe I can still make the trials at Arsenal?’

I was convinced I wasn’t going to get through that round. When they asked me to stay for another interview I was so astonished I blurted out, ‘Are you sure?
Me
?!’ It turned out that two of the people I’d been telling jokes to in the restaurant worked for Thompson recruitment and they’d been watching everyone to see if people were being entertaining. They said I really stood out as someone who was a laugh and really friendly. Result.

I had to have an interview with several Thompson execs and when they asked me what my strengths were I replied, ‘I’ve been a Bluecoat and I’m really good at talking to people from all different walks of life. I’m not a topper (someone who’s always trying to be better than other people) and I’m really easy going. I also know how to make people feel
special and I’m always up for a laugh.’ The interview seemed to go well but we weren’t going to hear for a minimum of two weeks, so we were sent away with all of the information about what the job would entail and told to be patient. The more I read about where we’d get to go and what we’d get to do, the more I thought ‘Wow, I could really do this. It would be amazing. I want this job!’

I couldn’t stop thinking about the job and every day I wanted it more and more. I’ve always been a bit impatient, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I rang up Thompson recruitment and said in the stupidly strong cockney accent I had at the time, ‘Hello, I was at the auditions last week and…’ Before I could even finish the sentence the woman on the other end said, ‘Is that Sam? We were just talking about you.’ Out of all of the hundreds of people who had auditioned that day she’d recognised me. I could only think that was a good thing? I wanted to shout, ‘Please tell me you want me!’ There was a pause and then she said, ‘I shouldn’t really be telling you this but you’ve got the job. Congratulations. We’ll be sending all of your documentation to you soon.’

I got off the phone and immediately said to my dad, ‘I’m going to the Mediterranean. I’ve got the bloody job!’ I was thrilled but also scared because I was 22 and I was going to be going abroad on my own for the first time ever. But what did I have to lose? I had nothing to keep me at home and I was desperate for some adventure. About a week later this
huge folder arrived telling me exactly where I was going, who I would be working with, what I would be expected to do and which songs I’d be singing. There were seven CDs from various shows that we’d be performing and I had to learn all of the lyrics beforehand. I also had to have a full medical, including a smear test, which I’d never had before.

I travelled up to Wakefield to do rehearsals for the shows with all of the other staff members. We learnt dance routines and we had to be able to perform together flawlessly. The entertainment team was made up of three female singers, including me, three male singers and four female dancers. One of the other singers, Jolene, was from the same area as me and we got on really well. The other female singer, Sarah, was amazing but she was much more of a musical theatre singer so she had really precise diction, which sounded a bit strange when she was singing pop songs. She put so much effort into everything she did and has since landed a role in a West End show, which she totally deserves. I’m so happy for her.

As for the men: John was a total lad and now performs in a Gary Barlow tribute act, Richard is an events manager and also does musical theatre, and Andrew is an absolutely wonderful guy who’s still singing now and does a lot of great charity work. The four dancers were called Hayley, Shirley, Carla and Nicola and we all bonded really quickly. We used to rehearse all day and then go down the local pub and do karaoke in the evenings. We were a bit of a powerhouse when
we walked through the door and no one else got much of a chance to get on the mic when we were around.

All of the crew I worked with came along to the
The X Factor
tour and we had a big reunion, which was brilliant but surreal. Some of us hadn’t seen each other for 14 years and now we’re all married and we’ve got kids. I still think of myself as that young girl in some ways, and I think it’s a real eye opener when you see old friends all grown up and settled down. I think I still expected some of them to look like they were in their early twenties, as if they’d been stuck in a time warp.

While I was in Wakefield I got the results of my medical, including the outcome of my smear test. I will never, ever forget looking down at the letter and seeing the words ‘severe cancer cells’ written down and then ‘abnormal cells’ written in the first line. Nowadays the word cancer isn’t used – doctors say ‘mild, moderate or severe changes’ instead – and you can imagine my reaction. I was petrified. No one in my family had ever had cancer, so it wasn’t something I was familiar with. But of course I’d heard enough stories to know that the disease can be fatal and it frightened the living shit out of me.

I went straight to a doctor who explained everything to me and said I would need the bad cells removed from my cervix. The waiting list for the procedure was three months and I had to be on the ship in two months’ time, so I ended up paying almost £500 to get it done privately at Queen
Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup. In the end, I had it the day I was leaving for my first ever cruise, which was far from ideal. I was in hospital in the morning and in the afternoon I had to fly out to the dry dock in Malaga. I was in a lot of pain but the excitement of what lay ahead helped to take my mind off of it.

A
s soon as I arrived in Malaga in March 1999 it was go go go. We had to go through all of the choreography again and I was still in agony from the procedure. I was bleeding a lot and the pain lasted for a couple of weeks. I don’t think dancing around was the best thing I could have done, but thank goodness for that medical because if I hadn’t had that test done I would never have known I had a problem.

We were all so excited about finally getting on to the ship and I couldn’t wait to see where I was going to be living for the next few months. When we boarded, everything was covered in plastic and it smelled so fresh and new. I had a suitcase full of glamorous dresses that I’d borrowed from anyone and everyone to get me through the first few weeks. During the day we wore a Thompson T-shirt and shorts, but we had to look smart in the evenings, especially when
we attended things like the Captain’s Dinner. I don’t do dresses so I had to beg, borrow and steal enough outfits to tide me over until I could afford to top up my wardrobe. I was a tomboy who struggled to put make-up on, so to suddenly have to wear floor-length gowns, glitzy jewellery and have my hair in a chignon felt so alien. I was so shoddy with everything; I didn’t have a clue! All I wanted was to go on stage and sing for people but the whole look was a massive part of it. It wasn’t even like my make-up could be subtle. I had to wear white and black eye shadow, bright red lipstick and false eyelashes. I felt like a clown.

A lot of people found themselves feeling really ill for the first few days on the ship, just because they weren’t used to bobbing up and down. It’s easy to underestimate how sick and disoriented it can make you feel if you haven’t done it before. I saw several of the crew rushing to the toilet at various times or gripping onto the bannisters for dear life when they were walking down the stairs. For some reason I was really lucky, and took to it like a duck to water, if you’ll pardon the pun. I find the sea quite soothing, especially when going to sleep. It was daunting at times because it was the first time I’d been somewhere where I couldn’t just hop into a car and go home, but the sight of the sun and beautiful new countries soon helped me get over that!

We’d been taught all of these skills in the run-up to the guests coming on board, like crowd management and how to sympathise with people by putting your head to one side.
We also used the word ‘excellent’ with people constantly, with the idea that when they came to fill out their comment forms at the end of the week they’d been so used to hearing the word they’d be more inclined to tick the ‘excellent’ box. Nine times out of ten I was excellent anyway, though!

We travelled to so many places like Gibraltar, Cádiz, Lisbon, all around the Greek islands and Italy. I ended up buying a Spanish mobile so that every time we were in Spanish waters I could phone home cheaply. My mum and I set up a joint bank account into which all of my payments went so she could look after it for me. Drinks on the ship were half-price for us and I didn’t have to buy any food because it was all provided, so I was able to save quite a lot of money. The only problem was I didn’t like a lot of the food on the ship because it was too rich for me. Yes, the fussy eater in me reared its head again. Things like stuffed aubergines or moussaka didn’t appeal at all, so if that was what we were given for dinner, mostly I would go without. We weren’t allowed to have food in our cabins, so it wasn’t like I could nip back there and eat something else.

I became quite ill for a while because much like at Pontins, I was running around constantly and not eating properly. I was also smoking a lot so lost loads of weight really quickly. At one point I collapsed and had to be put on a drip. After that happened, whenever we docked I was allowed to go and buy tins of ravioli and other things I liked and keep a stash of them hidden away. While the rest of the staff were tucking
into all these fancy dishes I was taking tins of spaghetti to the staff mess so the chefs could warm them up for me.

The staff piss-ups on the boat were legendary, but apart from the odd few B52 cocktails I was pretty well behaved. There was only one time I got properly drunk by mistake. Never again, etc. One night there was a problem with the lights on the ship because of an electrical fault and that meant we couldn’t leave the port in Malaga. We had to stay over, so a load of us went out to this bar. I was drinking vodka and orange and because Spanish measures are absolutely ridiculous I got drunk really,
really
quickly. I can still taste it in the back of my throat now and it makes me heave. We didn’t have a curfew that night, so we headed back to the ship at around 2am, and as soon as the fresh air hit me I was gone. I was so hammered I had to be held up by other members of staff.

When we got back to the ship the captain was stood at the top of the walkway looking furious. Everyone was shouting at me to stand up because I was dragging my feet along but I was well and truly hammered. I climbed up the gangway and started singing to him, which is
not
something you do to the captain of the ship: you’re supposed to have the utmost respect for him. He could easily have sacked me but according to one of my friends he had a bit of a smile on his face, and instead of bollocking me he told my friends to take me the back way to my cabin to keep me out of sight of any passengers. As soon as I got into my
cabin I was violently sick, and I carried on throwing up for most of the night, which meant I got zero sleep.

I woke up the next morning with a crashing hangover and a massive sense of shame. I’d been kicked in the face when I was 14 playing football and lost one of my teeth. As a result I had a plate with a false tooth attached that I could take in and out. When I eventually managed to haul myself up and look in the mirror I realised that my false tooth was missing. I looked everywhere for it and then it hit me that I must have flushed it down the toilet when I was being sick. I went into full-on panic mode. I had to perform that night and I had this massive hole where my tooth should have been. Every time I spoke I was whistling through the gap and I was mortified.

Everyone was taking the mickey out of me and singing ‘Whistle While You Work’. Every time I talked to someone I was covering my mouth. But ‘the show must go on’, and that night I had to get up on stage in front of a packed room of people and sing ‘Big Spender’, which actually sounded more like Big Ssshhhpender.

Thankfully we stayed moored in Malaga for another day and somehow my friend Janice managed to get me an appointment with a dentist the next morning. I had an impression done and I was able to pick up my new tooth before we set sail again. What a relief. Funnily enough that was the last time I tested whether or not I liked get really drunk, whether by mistake or otherwise. I didn’t.

At the end of every month we’d all get our bar bills and sit around guessing whose was the highest and the lowest. I used to buy other people alcohol sometimes, but I stuck to Fanta after that fateful night, so mine was always the lowest at around £40-£50. Some people’s were £400–£500, which was about a quarter of their wages. And the drinks were
half-price
as well! Most of my spare money went on CDs and DVDs. I was a fan of the New Radicals and Jamiroquai. ‘You Get What You Give’ was my song at that time. We used to take it in turns to DJ in the staff mess, but some people used to play shit music on purpose because they knew I’d get annoyed and take over, meaning they could go and sit in the bar and get drunk.

A few months after I started on the ship I paid for my mum and her friend to come out and visit me. Sadly my dad was too unwell to come but I think it was exactly what Mum needed and deserved after all her hard work. To be fair it probably felt like a holiday for my dad too, because it meant no arguments for a week and he could have his drinking buddies round without being told off!

Mum and her mate got upgraded and I gave the bar staff loads of pre-paid slips for drinks, so they had a whale of a time. We did two shows a night and Mum always tried to sneak in and see me perform twice because she was so proud of me. Before she left the boat at the end of the trip, Mum went to settle her bar bill. The woman in front of her had spent £700; my mum’s was £5.40 for the entire trip. On the other hand,
not surprisingly my bar bill that week was the biggest it would be the whole time I was working on the ships.

Mum loved her time on board so much I paid for her to came back with my nan a few months later. Because my nan was old she used to wash her knickers every night and hang them up in her cabin, so you could often tell where her room was if they were billowing around on the balcony. She also had a bit of a crush on the Spanish doctor, so she used to feign illness just so she could go and visit him. It was brilliant having family coming to see me because I did get homesick sometimes. I missed stupid things like my own bed and certain chocolate bars, but I never once regretted going.

Although I had an amazing time on the ship, I also experienced one of the scariest moments of my life while I was there. One night Jolene and I were sat outside in an area called the Winter Gardens having a cigarette before the evening performance. We were leaving Morocco and we both noticed that the sea seemed really choppy. Suddenly this massive wave leapt over the side of the ship and completely soaked us both. Jolene went one way and I went the other and when we scrambled back onto our seats we were thinking ‘What the hell just happened?’ My show make-up was running down my face and my hair was dripping. The further we went out to sea the worse the wind became, but by then it was too late for us to turn around and go back to land.

When we went back inside the ship was rocking all over the place and plates and glasses were slipping off tables and smashing. Of course we had to try and keep people calm and act normally, so we went ahead with the entertainment. The only problem was I was scheduled to sing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ from
Titanic
, which probably wasn’t the most appropriate song to be singing when the waves were crashing against the side of the boat and the guests were panicking. We couldn’t even change the running order of the songs because the backing tracks were all on one CD and it was impossible to skip through them. I had no choice but to get up and perform the most ill-timed song of my career.

Just before I took to the stage the casino table fell on some poor woman’s leg and the grand piano slid across the room. There was broken glass everywhere and people were going back to their cabins and putting on life jackets, then coming back to watch the show wearing them. One little kid even came up and asked me if we were going to die. I told him that it was all just a silly game, but I was feeling really breathless.

I was begging the cruise director not to make me sing because I was struggling to stand up, but five minutes later I found myself out on stage with a painted-on smile preparing to do my best Celine Dion impersonation. I had to hold on to a stool and stand with my legs as wide apart as I could to balance myself. As soon as the backing track started the looks on people’s faces were priceless. Some
found it funny; others were horrified. I felt so guilty but I was just doing what I’d been told.

The Captain was amazing. He was walking around calmly trying to reassure everyone, but I genuinely feared for my life. Parts of the ship were flooded, people were throwing up and I was physically shaking with fear. I vowed there and then that I would never sing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ again – and I didn’t until I performed it on
The X Factor
. People had asked me so many times since that night to sing it when I’d done shows or karaoke, but I’d flatly refused. Thankfully, by the next day the weather had calmed down, although the clean-up operation was quite something. It’s a night I’ll remember in great detail for the rest of my life.

Towards the end of my first season, I heard about some openings on another ship called
The Emerald
. The cruise was called The Millennium Cruise and it was travelling all around the Caribbean and docking in New Orleans on Millennium night. Anyone on our ship who wanted to try out for a job was allowed to audition. If we got accepted we’d have to put in extra time while doing all of our other work because there were four new shows to learn, but I was willing to put in the hard work. It sounded like too good an opportunity to miss. Quite a few people from the entertainment crew auditioned and thankfully most of us, including me, were accepted. We went straight into rehearsals and although it was bloody hard work I knew that it would all be worth it when we moored up in sunny St Lucia.

I was supposed to have a two-week break back home in Kent before I joined
The Emerald
, only unbeknown to me all of Darren’s family had booked a trip to come and see me as a surprise. I felt terrible that I wouldn’t be there, so I asked my boss if I could stay on the ship and pay as a passenger. Instead he said I could stay for free if I did two cabaret performances, which sounded like a great deal to me! We had an amazing time together and it was the perfect way to round off my first ever job on a cruise ship.

After that everything was a bit of a rush. I got the chance to go home for a few days and then I had to go straight to Manchester to do more rehearsals. I flew direct from Manchester to the Dominican Republic and it was a totally different ball game to the last cruise. This was big time.

The ship was in dry dock and even though we were living on the ship from day one we got to go out and explore. One night we all went out to a nightclub called Mambo’s. When we got there the club was on the beach and it was totally open air. At one point I was dancing away to ‘YMCA’ and having such a laugh. I looked around me and thought, ‘My god, I’m being paid to be here. It doesn’t get much better than this!’

I wish now I’d written a diary about all of the sights I saw on that ship. It was unbelievable. I went to the Dunn’s River Falls in Jamaica, and the rainforest and places I could only ever have dreamed of seeing. One of the best things for me was when we landed in Barbados. I went to the nearest
phone box and I called my dad and said, ‘Dad, I’m ringing you from Barbados!’ He laughed and said, ‘Alright, you win.’ It was one of those brilliant, life-affirming moments, one that I’ll never forget.