Unbreakable: My New Autobiography Read Free Page A

There’s barely time to run to the loo during rehearsals, let alone address a thorny issue, so I decided that backstage before the live show started would be the best option.
    Silvana and I talked tactics and decided that, given her history and friendship with Dannii, it would be friendlier and less confrontational if she approached her on my behalf.
    So she headed off down the corridor, popped her head round Dannii’s dressing-room door and asked politely whether she had a couple of minutes spare to have a quick chat with me.
    No, she couldn’t come now as she was getting ready, and apparently up against the clock. Well, that pissed me off. We had at least another two hours before the show started, so we were hardly pushed for time. Given the circumstances, I thought she could have been more gracious.
    About half an hour later, I asked Silvana if she would mind returning to the little madam’s boudoir and asking again whether she could spare some of her precious time to grant me a brief audience. She reappeared again a couple of minutes later, looking sheepish.
    ‘Sorry, it’s another no. Maybe later.’
    That was it. I felt the familiar hot swell of fury rise in my chest, the same red mist that has blurred my better judgement on countless other occasions. I admit it. I have a very bad temper, but at times like this I just can’t help it. I’m someone who wears my heart on my sleeve and I can’t be contrived. Much as I would sometimes like to, I can’t have a stern word with myself and retreat into a corner until I’m more composed. After an outburst, I have often reflected that it would have been far better to retaliate with a measured, devastatingly damning riposte. But instead, I always go BANG, say what’s on my mind and then think, Oh shit, did I really just do that?
    So I was off, heading out of the door like an Exocet missile propelled by sheer fury.
    As well as Silvana, my publicist Gary Farrow was in my dressing room at the time, and so was the woman in charge of press for Simon Cowell’s TV company Syco.
    ‘You lot are coming with me because I am going in that fucking dressing room now .’ I just wanted to deal with it.
    I went charging down the hallway and hammered on the door. When her shocked assistant answered, I threw myself into the room. Dannii was sitting in front of the mirror, being made up. She had rollers in her hair, but still looked annoyingly gorgeous.
    ‘I want a word with you. What the fuck is going on?’ I demanded.
    ‘What are you talking about? I don’t understand.’ Her mouth had fallen open in shock.
    ‘I have absolutely no problem with you, so what’s all this negative press?’
    ‘I honestly don’t know what you are talking about. This is ridiculous.’ She looked uncomfortable. ‘I’ve got to get ready and I’m nervous, this is my first live show…’
    And that was it. She turned back to the mirror and made it very clear that the conversation, if that’s what you could call it, was over.
    Nervous! Oh please , she’d been prancing up and down on stages since she was a fucking foetus, so the notion that a few TV cameras were suddenly going to faze her was utterly laughable. Gary could sense that I still had plenty of fuel left in my tank for carrying it on, so got hold of my arm and started to guide me towards the exit.
    ‘Just stop it,’ I shot back over my shoulder at Dannii before flouncing out with as much dignity as I could muster.
    It was her birthday that day and what made it even more annoying was that I had bought her a gorgeous Chanel handbag, which I’d left in her room earlier with a little card. It had cost me eighteen hundred quid; a lot of money whichever way you look at it. Oh well, I thought, she’ll probably give back the handbag after my little outburst, so at least something good will come of it. I rather fancied it for myself anyway. But no. Just as Zsa Zsa Gabor once said that she never hated a man enough to give back his diamonds, Dannii