[ ClassicalX ] The drugs, sackings, ground-to-air missiles and Playboy

Katherine Jenkins reveals all...

On a cold bright afternoon in London, Katherine Jenkins is recalling the horrifying moment she almost lost her life in an RAF helicopter thousands of feet above the grey waters of the Tigris at the height of the Iraq conflict.

'I was flying over Basra on my way to perform for the troops. I was squashed in with the pilot and a couple of other people. We were all pretty tired because we'd been travelling for hours but all I was thinking about was getting there and singing for those soldiers.

'You are always aware of noise in a helicopter but then suddenly there was this incredibly loud noise and the helicopter just dropped out of the sky. There was an unbelievable sensation of falling. Someone shouted that we'd been hit. It was a ground-to-air missile and it was being fired at us. All I could think was, "This is it... I'm done."

'To be honest, everything just froze. I was terrified and panicking but I also felt weirdly calm. That was it. There was nothing I could do. All I remember is the falling sensation. Everything outside seemed grey and you could almost feel the water and land coming at you. And then it stopped and somehow the pilot landed. We were pulled out and all I could think was that I was alive.'

You might imagine that would have been the first and last time she ever put her delicate foot in a war zone. But you'd be wrong.

'It would be totally insulting to those thousands of troops to even think like that,' she says.

'Whatever risk I take is nothing compared to the risks they take on a daily basis. Just getting out to Afghanistan is a marathon journey by troop carrier and helicopter. You never know what will happen at any step but nothing would ever stop me going. Of all the things I do, it's probably the thing that means the most to me.

'In Afghanistan I was put in a second helicopter, which took off just a few minutes after a first one was launched. Absolutely nothing happened but when I got out of the plane I was told by one of the troops that I'd just been used as a decoy for the head of the Ministry of Defence who was in the helicopter in front. No one mentioned it until we landed. I guess that's the way it goes.

'Another time, in Iraq, the plane that was supposed to get me out couldn't take off. The whole place was completely fogbound and there was huge panic because the next day they were expecting a mortar attack. I felt as unsafe as everyone else.

'Out there you are totally aware life is made up of moments and you have no idea what is going to happen - you just have to get on with what is going on right then. Luckily the attack never took place and we got out. You have to put yourself in those situations to have any idea of what those soldiers go through on a minute-by-minute basis.'
This is not the conversation you would expect to be having with Jenkins. A year ago, her name conjured up the image of a light, celebrity soufflé. A girl with Page Three looks and a voice to rival Kiri te Kanawa, she was a Classic FM pin-up.

Like an over-sugared icing, Katherine's image was sweet enough to rot teeth. And despite a reputed £9 million fortune from her five million classical-lite record sales, there was something too good to be true about this clean-cut girl from Neath.

Then nine months ago, Jenkins, 29, did something that blew her carefully constructed image out of the water. One evening, after a conversation with friends and her mother, Susan, she picked up the phone to Live columnist Piers Morgan and confessed to having experimented with cocaine, ecstasy and marijuana. It was a call that could have wrecked her career.

Today she is sitting drinking cola in a café overlooking Camden Lock in London. In the harsh glare of the mid-afternoon sun, she looks flawless. Only her blue eyes have a slightly haunted look.

'The biggest misconception of me has always been that I'm totally perfect,' she says.

'People think that I'm this whiter-than-white girl who has never made any mistakes.' She pauses. 'But I have. I've made loads of mistakes.'

It is clear she is talking mainly about the six-month period in her life when, aged 21, she partied hard. The question has to be, in Jenkins' case, why mention it? No one knew, no one was threatening to blow the whistle - why did she choose to spill the murky beans all over herself? Particularly when, in her own case, her revelations opened up floodgates to other not-so-pleasant aspects of her behaviour.

Post-confession there have been reports of a feud with Charlotte Church, her firing after six years of her faithful manager, Brian Lane, who helped her through her very first record deal, and various kinds of diva-ish behaviour. Allegedly she'll only drink Diet Coke warm, insists on three towels - one old, one new and one semi-old - wears a surgical mask on flights, insists on six vegetarian meals being offered to her every hour, demands a 24/7 chauffeur and spends a minimum of four hours in hair and make-up, with astronomical bills to boot...
Surely none of this negativity would have started if she hadn't opened her mouth in the first place?

'It was definitely not a spontaneous thing,' she says. 'If I'm honest, the period of my life when I took drugs has to be my greatest regret. I think the reason I decided to speak to Piers was because he actually asked me if I'd ever taken drugs. I was so shocked he'd asked I just evaded the question by telling him no one had ever asked me that before.

When I told my mum I'd tried drugs, she just looked at me and said 'Katherine' and shook her head. That was it, but that was enough

'I couldn't get it out of my head. I actually felt sick and I couldn't sleep. I'm not a dishonest person and I couldn't stand the thought I hadn't told him the truth.

'I knew it was a big risk in terms of my career but I also knew it was the truth. When he asked me I felt like a rabbit in the headlights. I didn't want to say "Yes", because I didn't want it to sound as if I was condoning that sort of behaviour. I wanted to think about how to explain myself.

'I was very conscious of the fact people had put me on this pedestal. I'm not that girl. I'm as human and flawed as everyone else but what I do think is important is that every time I make a mistake, I try to learn from it. I was a student at the Royal Academy, I was doing a bit of modelling and I'd recently broken up from the guy I'd been going out with since I was 14. I was mixing with a different crowd and I think I was just trying to be cool. I wanted to be accepted, so when I was offered drugs I said yes.

'It wasn't the first time I'd been asked to try drugs. When I first arrived in London I started doing a bit of modelling and promotional work to earn extra money. I'd go to parties and tell people I was training to be an opera singer. People would never believe me. They'd look at me and just laugh.

'In a lot of ways I was used to that reaction. I had it from the inside and outside, and it was mainly because of the way I looked and my background.'

She experimented with cocaine and ecstasy, and foolishly allowed herself to be videoed using the drugs. When she talks about this period, the words come reluctantly; she is cir*****spect about people, places, details. But she is clear about why she stopped.

'I was never an Amy Winehouse. I would try drugs at a party and then it would be a few months or so between taking them again. I did drugs just a handful of times and one thing I do remember is that I never felt comfortable about it. I had terrible comedowns afterwards, where I'd feel dreadful for days. I hated the paranoia, the horrible hangover feeling and the wasted days.

'I was also at this point where I had the chance of a record deal. I'm no idiot. My career is all about my voice. What I was doing wasn't good for me and it wasn't good for my voice. I just stopped, moved out of that environment.
'A few months later, I was at home in Neath. My mum was asking me about someone we both knew and asking whether I thought she was into drugs. I told my mum that I'd tried drugs. I felt I had to tell her. I couldn't sit there and pretend the subject had nothing to do with me. I told her I'd taken them and I didn't like them and I'd stopped. She didn't say anything. She just looked at me and said "Katherine" and shook her head. There was no drama, no crying. That was it, but that was enough.'

Jenkins began singing in her local church and it was her choirmaster who recognised her qualities.

'I was a normal kid,' she says. 'I liked Celine Dion, Madonna, Mariah Carey and then at my church, St David's, my choirmaster started making me listen to pieces of classical music. Bit by bit he was educating me and exposing me to these other sounds and I got hooked.'

She and her younger sister, Laura, were looked after by their father, Selwyn, while her mother went out to work. Selywn was 55 when Katherine was born.

'I totally adored my dad but my mother was the strong one. She was the one who worked and she brought me and Laura up with a massive work ethic. My dad was ahead of his time in many ways as he realised that the best way for us was for my mum to work and him to be the house-husband.'
When she was 15, Selywn died of cancer.

'I can't describe what it was like,' she says, 'apart from to say that nothing could ever be worse and everything I do today is motivated by the thought, "This is what my dad would want".

'It happened so quickly. We found out he was ill and then it was over. My dad was gone. The man who used to tease me and tell me he'd see me on This Is Your Life, the man who'd take me to school and make my tea. He was the centre of my life.

'After he died I tried to be the one who coped. I didn't show my emotions, because I wanted to be the supportive one. Three years later I basically fell apart. I started having nightmares about my dad being trapped in a burning house and me not being able to get him out. This nightmare just kept repeating and repeating. I went to my doctor and he told me it was grief and I had to deal with it.

'I knew I had to. I knew I'd never be able to move forward. I went to a grief counsellor, someone who didn't know me or my family or my dad, and I just talked and talked. It helped me so much.

'There was a long time I couldn't sing the song Pie Jesu because it was his favourite song, the song I sang at his funeral with my sister playing on the organ. But now I've recorded it on my album (Believe). That song for me will always be for my dad.'

Jenkins is a lot tougher than any of us would believe. There is a surprising lack of vulnerability about her. Every fault she has she is aware of, from (what she thinks is) a too-defined jaw to an overdependency on men ('I know it's because of my father dying'). Control is one of her favourite words; she likes to have control, from her very first album at the age of 23 to her autobiography a few years later.

She is under no illusions.

'I've always faced prejudice,' she says. 'I'm a working-class girl from Wales. I have blonde hair and wear pretty dresses. There are a lot of people in the classical music world who absolutely loathe me. The critics slate me because I'm not what they consider the real thing.
'People expect a classical singer to be big and fat with Wagnerian horns on her head. Sorry, that's not me. It never was and I always knew my looks would be my advantage.

'I'm totally aware of how to market myself, totally aware of the effect of the way I look. And personally I'd rather see an attractive man playing Romeo than a big fat old man. Why can't opera singers look good? I don't get it.
'My aim was to make classical music popular. I get intimidated going to the opera and it makes me angry because it shouldn't be like that. But I'm doing my thing and I don't care what the critics think. I'd never let them get in my way.'

The past few months have been, she says, 'some of the worst of my life'.

She parted company from manager Lane after six years and much has been written about how she turned on the man who made her career. Jenkins has said nothing - until now.

'I count myself as a very loyal person,' she says.

'And I'm very grateful to him. But I didn't just leave him over something I didn't deem to be really, really important. All I will say is there are accountants and lawyers looking into the situation.

'I feel I've been through something incredibly traumatic but I also feel I've learnt a massive amount. Now I look at my accounts, now I take real note of the business side. I feel so strongly I want to go to music colleges and tell kids this. You have to learn or you get burnt.'

She laughs away the diva claims, then returns to the subject of her greatest passion - the situation of the British armed forces. Jenkins has sung for the soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cyprus and in London for the Chelsea Pensioners, where her link to the Army began.

'I had a friend who had a relative who was a Chelsea Pensioner. I was a student and she told me no one ever went to sing for them. I went along and sang at their bar. After that I was asked back and then just got more and more involved. I sang with Vera Lynn and it really meant something to me.'
She has travelled the most dangerous Army routes in the world to perform to soldiers.

'It's not about glamour. People call me a sex symbol but that's the last thing about appearing before the troops. Going to Afghanistan you travel for days and days just to get there. You have what you can carry in one rucksack. I sleep in my clothes and don't shower because there is no shower. I definitely smell and my hair is all over the place.

'It's unbelievably uncomfortable and horribly cold but you don't care. I never feel so emotional as when I sing for those guys. I sleep when I can and try to meet as many of the boys as possible. I wear perfume because they don't get to smell it in the camps and it's a link to home, to their loved ones, to normal life.

'I have kids crying to me, telling me they hate being there. They're frightened, they want to go home. I just hold their hands and talk about when they're next out of there. I write them letters, send them messages and make them know they count to me.

'I think more singers should go out there. It's not about your image or doing it to get publicity, it's about lifting the spirits of these kids putting their lives on the line. It's not just female performers either. I'd like to see Take That performing for the troops - that would make a lot of female soldiers very happy.'

Jenkins has a quality that makes her fit in with very different people. She is friends with Sarah Brown and Naomi Campbell, has a good relationship with Prince Charles and Camilla, and hangs out with Tom Jones, the Stereophonics, Aled Jones and Rhys Ifans.

'It's a Welsh thing,' she says. 'I'll talk to anyone but if I'm at an event and there's someone else from Wales there you'll always find we go knocking on each other's doors. Doesn't matter who you are.'
Of her reported feud with Charlotte Church she says they have a pact never to believe what is written about each other in the press.

'I love her. We sang together at the rugby. There had been all this awful stuff in the press about us and I just rang her the night before and talked about customising our rugby shirts. She's cool. She's been in this business long enough to work out what people are like.'

Jenkins's next move is to crack America. Ever the tactician, she has employed Madonna's legendary PR Liz Rosenberg to oil the wheels.

'I told her I wanted world domination but that I would work like a slave. She laughed and told me that was the right attitude.'

To relax, she drives her own car (an Audi Q7) and goes shopping ('I love clothes'). She takes her mum and sister on holiday, and she does - occasionally - drink.

'There's a lot I don't do,' she says. 'I wouldn't do Playboy; I won't go too far in a photo shoot. In many ways I'm an old-fashioned girl. I prefer the sexiness of Marilyn Monroe to anyone else. But I am Welsh and all good Welsh girls know how to drink.

'I don't do it that often but every New Year I hire the local cricket club and let everything hang out. I drink Malibu and Coke, which I know is unclassy, but I can drink any man under the table.

'I know how to have fun but it's more a question of when and where and with whom. I'm in this for the long haul and from now on it's all about moving forward.'

Katherine Jenkins' album 'Believe' is released on October 26 on Warner Bros Records

Source: Daily Mail