Rebecca Ferguson chats about her showbiz life ahead of a gig at Birmingham Town Hall

She doesn’t talk to Simon or Cheryl any more. And Louis Walsh and Nicole Scherzinger are just dim and distant memories, people she used to know when she was too young to know any better. She’s not that fussed about their parting of the waves. What is it they say about the past being a foreign country, where they do things differently? That’s how she feels. That’s what it’s like.

Not that she isn’t grateful. The X Factor catapulted Rebecca Ferguson into a different world. For a while, it made her extremely famous. And for a while, she enjoyed that. But then her Scouse upbringing helped her to get her feet back on the ground and stop being somebody she wasn’t.

And now, eight years on, she’s never been happier. The X Factor gave her a break. But it also showed her how dark and seedy the music business can be. She was a victim – as well as a beneficiary – of its star-making, dream-fulfilling properties.

When Rebecca first appeared on The X Factor, there were two defining qualities. Firstly, she had an astonishing voice. Rebecca, who was 23, lived in a little terraced house in Anfield, Liverpool, had got two little kids, and dazzled both the judges and the audience. Her rendition of Change Is Gonna Come was a jaw-droppingly beautiful moment. Simon and Nicole didn’t know where to look. Pound signs flashed in the eyes of Louis.

But the greatest quality, in fact, was her humanity. She didn’t introduce herself as a singer. She introduced herself as a mum. And she didn’t prattle on about wanting to be a star. She told the judges she was back at college, learning law, so that she could provide for her two young kids and give them a settled, stable upbringing. She put them – not herself – first. But she also had a voice like Billie Holiday.

Simon loved her. At her audition, he said: “I think potentially, you have an incredible voice. I genuinely do. Your voice is absolutely on the money right now, I mean, totally on the money. You’ve got three yeses. Congratulations.”

And after knocking her rivals into a cocked hat and blossoming as the show went on, she finished as runner-up to Matt Cardle. Boom diddy boom.

Fast forward eight years and the woman who’s had one of the best voices that The X Factor has ever known has been around the block. She’s avoided superstardom. Maybe it was her shyness or maybe it was the management wrangles that scuppered her A-list status. Who cares. The queen of the blues has retained the two qualities that The X Factor first displayed. Firstly, she has a voice that puts her among the ranks of Nina, Aretha, Etta and more. And secondly, she’s just so damn likeable. Humble, grounded and sweet – she’s the singer it’s impossible not to love.

She completed a residency earlier this year in London, singing the blues songs that she so loves. It was a hit. The critics raved. And now she’s taking a more accessible, poppier show on the road – headlining Birmingham Town Hall along the way on February 13. Fans can look forward to hits from her four top 10 albums.

“The tour is my own music. There’s everything from the first to the third albums. And there’s some other songs too. I’m really loving Stormzy at the minute, so there might be Blinded by Your Grace. And I like Ed Sheeran too, so there might be Shape of You. I’ve always loved Chaka Khan, so there might be a cover from her too.

“I like doing a bit of everything to be honest. I’m most natural singing the blues. But I love all music really. I love classical too. If it’s got a great melody then I just love it.” She looks back on her initial days with a mixture of relief, happiness and confusion. There was the relationship with Zayn Malik, the mentoring by Cheryl, the sponsorship deal with Walkers Sunbites and the nominations for MTV, Mobo and Glamour Women of the Year awards, as well as the previous unsuccessful auditions for The X Factor and P Diddy’s Starmaker, in New York. The money it cost to fly there nearly wiped her out.

And then she recalls how it all turned around. How Nicole said: “I told you the first time I saw her, she is our generation’s songbird.” How she sold more than a million records, earning gold and platinum discs.

“I think for me, when it all happened at the beginning, I was a rabbit in the headlines. It took me a while to get used to it and I got lost on it for a year, which is natural for a 22-year-old girl with fame and money. I quickly realised it’s not what life’s about. Life is about family. I love music, I love performing to people, I love making people feel good and forgetting about their troubles for a life. But I love my kids more.

“Fame isn’t where I live. That defines some people. Fame is where they live. They have to have that validation. But I get my validation every day when I’m getting up with my little girl, taking her to the toilet or washing her face. I had grounding by having my kids young. I guess that’s why it’s a little different for me.”

Being a singer isn’t a nine-to-five, of course. And while most mums will be home to put their children to bed each evening, she finds herself in clubs singing songs by Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart or Billie Holiday. Finding the balance between home and the stage isn’t easy.

“You’re right. It’s not a nine-to-five. Doing this is a constant gamble and you feel guilty by working. But that’s how you get through. That’s how I live.

“As well as singing, I’m teaching them about ambition and encouraging them to go for their dreams and goals. I make sure I have that time with them. They often come on tour with me. Two of them are too old now because they’re at senior school. But in the early days they’d come with me and I’d take a tutor.”

Singing is all Rebecca wanted to do. Just as some people want to be a hairdresser or a footballer, others want to be a lawyer or a cook, Rebecca wanted to sing. And her belief that she’d one day make it, that she’d pay the bills by crooning never faltered. She knew she’d get there. She didn’t know how, but she knew she would.

“It’s what I always wanted and something that I knew would eventually happen. The business side was a lot darker than I’d realised. So that was the only adjustment really. Everything else was exactly as I’d imagined.”

When Rebecca first auditioned, 10 years ago, she was told she was too shy, that she didn’t connect with the audience and almost seemed to be singing to herself, rather than the crowd. That’s long since changed. These days, she looks the audience straight in the eye, making a strong connection. She does it in conversation too. There’s nothing blasé or remote, there are no affectations or airs and graces. Rebecca tells it like it is: she’s polite and enquiring, honest and true.

“I’m happiest on stage. I used to say I was happiest in the studio because I was shy and nervous on stage. But over time, I’ve learnt that being on stage is really freeing, I love people having a nice time and being moved and that’s what I’m able to give them when I’m on stage.”

The music industry wasn’t what she thought it would be. Rebecca thought there’d be decent, benign sorts working to give her a platform while taking their cut along the way. It wasn’t like that. She was swimming with sharks from the off and at times found herself chewed up and spat out. She’s identified with the stories women have shared in recent months of abuse at the hands of men in positions of power.

“I think the music business is very political and I didn’t cope and it was a very hard time for me. I’m grateful that a lot of people are coming out with the hashtag #MeToo. At one point I will be able to tell my story because in reality it wasn’t easy and that hindered my career.

“And now I feel like this is my year. I’ve got so much positivity and people that wish me well. I have such a lovely supportive family and 2019 will also be a really good year.”

She’s coy about what exactly happened and her experience may have been quite difficult to those of other women.

“With #MeToo, oh, I don’t know. With me it’s a different experience to some of the other women. I’d just say where there’s power and money there’s ego and where there’s ego, there’s misuse of power. There’s not enough women in those powerful positions. I hate to sound sexist, but if there were more women in the industry they’d balance things out. That ego and bravado takes over in the music industry and so what should be a lovely industry often isn’t.”

The singer has changed her life. She moved to Paris and she’s fought back from an emotional meltdown, after becoming a single mother for the second time. And she’s also found time to focus on her career. She’s been writing and is looking forward to notching up her fifth straight top 10 album.

“I’ll be recording and releasing new music later this year. It’s great. I’m finally being allowed to be myself with no hindrances and nobody telling me what to wear. It’s a transformation year. It’s a time to be me completely. And 2019 is definitely going to be great. There’s a lot going on.”

She credits much of her success to her upbringing. Being brought up in Scouseland gave her a humility and discipline that’s absent from some of her fellow pop stars. Liverpool gave her a good moral code, a decent set of values.

“Liverpool’s always gonna be important to me, yes. That’s where I’m from and it gave me a good ground. We’re quite quirky people. We don’t need therapists. We just chat to anyone, people on the bus, giving them our life stories.”

And her humble upbringing has also helped her not to get carried away – despite a crazy year at the age of 22. “When you’ve come from that background, you don’t start looking down on people. You just get on with your life. I’m very grateful for my upbringing and I love that. I love going back to Liverpool. It’s special in my heart.”

She no longer thinks about the way it all began. She doesn’t hanker for the excitement or glory that The X Factor gave her. A simple dressing room, a decent audience and a night full of exquisite tunes is more than enough for her. “I’ve not spoken to The X Factor lot – Cheryl and Simon – for eight years now.”

And she probably doesn’t need to. She’s outgrown them. The songbird has flown.