Not a diva

Leona Lewis. Photo / Photo / Supplied

It is 2006 and Leona Lewis, a softly spoken 21-year-old receptionist from East London, is auditioning for ITV talent show The X Factor. She pauses and then belts out a soaring a cappella version of the classic Somewhere Over The Rainbow. The rest, as the cliche goes, is history.

Lewis, alongside Susan Boyle, is one of British reality television's greatest rags-to-riches tales. And now, having just released her second album Echo, she remains not only one of the UK's biggest stars, but by all accounts one of the nicest and most untainted in the business.

Lewis had no preconceived grandiose notions of winning the Simon Cowell-conceived show. "I didn't go in there with any expectations. To be honest, I didn't think I'd make it past the first audition," she says.

She won, of course, and in doing so turned the British music industry on its head when just a few short months later she released her debut single Bleeding Love.

The Ryan Tedder-penned pop gem topped the charts in more than 35 countries, holding its spot in the UK for a record-breaking seven weeks and making her the first British female to head the US charts in 20 years.

Lewis' first album, Spirit, went on to become the fastest-selling debut album in the UK, selling more than 200 copies a minute on its day of release; a record now surpassed only by Cowell's latest protege, Susan Boyle and her debut, I Dreamed A Dream.

Having being enrolled at London's Sylvia Young Theatre School as a child before ending up at the prestigious BRIT school, which boasts alumni such as Lily Allen, Katie Melua and Amy Winehouse, Lewis knew a little of what she was letting herself in for.

But the unassuming singer, who turns 25 in April, admits experiencing fame at such a rapid rate was hard to deal with. She felt for Boyle when she suffered a very public emotional breakdown last year after her crushing defeat on Britain's Got Talent. "It can be very difficult afterwards," she admits. "There's a lot of pressure on you, going overnight from being able to just walk down the street, to suddenly everybody knowing who you are and knowing your business, to people criticising you.

"If people say something negative, that's the one that sticks with you rather than the hundreds of positive things that are said. It can be difficult and I do sympathise with what she [Boyle] went through."

Since her meteoric rise to the top, Lewis has been hailed by Oprah Winfrey as a star; performed alongside Mariah Carey and Beyonce and closed the Beijing Olympics with Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page.

But speaking on the phone from Los Angeles, where she's preparing for a world tour - in between appearances on the red carpet at Hollywood events like the Golden Globes - she appears unaffected by fame and completely oblivious to the fuss.

With her single Happy, which she co-wrote with Tedder, already doing well on radio, Lewis looks set to be a key player in the music industry for some time to come. And yet, she has no inclination to upgrade her humble home in Hackney - just around the corner from her parents - for a Primrose Hill mansion. She lives with her electrician boyfriend Lou Al-Chamaa, whom she has known since she was 10.

"I keep a pretty low profile. People ask, 'How do you do that, how do you still live in the same area?' But I have lived there for years and I couldn't see myself living anywhere else right now, simply because I'm travelling a lot and when I come home, I want to be with my family and that's where my family is," she says.

But Lewis has also witnessed the scary side of superstardom. Last October, the singer was left with a badly bruised face and whiplash after being punched at a book signing in London. Her attacker, Peter Kowalczyk, reportedly a jealous contestant who had been ejected from The X Factor, later pleaded guilty to common assault and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for an indefinite period.

Lewis said shortly after she was "completely devastated" by the attack and felt "frightened about going out in public".

Several months on, and Lewis says she still finds the incident "shocking". "Along with the great, great, great things, there are the things that aren't so good. We are put into the spotlight and put out there, so yes, you do have to be very aware of your surroundings and security," she says.

It's a fear likely to be compounded by another incident just days after we spoke on the phone, in which US media reported that Lewis had been caught in the middle of a gangland shoot-out as she stopped for coffee in Los Angeles. The star was unharmed but shaken by the drama.

Through it all, however, Lewis remains grateful for the opportunities she's been given. Where others would struggle to find kind words to describe Cowell aka "Mr Nasty", she speaks favourably of her X Factor mentor. She describes him as "instrumental' in her career and wishes him all the best for his impending departure from American Idol at the end of the current season, whichscreens on Fridays and Saturdays on TV2.

She also speaks proudly of her work and support of the WSPA (World Society for the Protection of Animals) and confirms it is true that she turned down a "significant amount of money" to open a sale at Harrods in London because the upmarket British department store sells fur. "Money doesn't really matter to me when it comes to the welfare of animals," says the singer, a vegetarian since the age of 12.

And if that's not enough to convince you that Lewis really is one of the nicest people in show business, how about this: After being disconnected on the last question of the interview, I hang up the phone a little frustrated that I've not had the chance to at least thank her for the 15 minutes of her time she's given me.

Forty-five minutes later my phone rings and a softly spoken voice announces, "Hi, it's Leona." Surely not! But indeed, she has tracked down my number and just wants to say sorry that we got disconnected and to check that I got everything I needed.

She also wants to say thank you.

* Leona Lewis' second album, Echo, is out now.