Tulisa - The Biography by Chas Newkey-Burden

conversation they had.

CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    I magine poor Tulisa’s torment when B died. Just two days earlier the band had played perhaps their most exciting show to date. ‘I Swear’ had been released and was receiving much airplay on Kiss FM. The audience was absolutely pumped for their arrival, greeting the band with screams. ‘It was difficult to take in,’ wrote Fazer later. The crowd got so manic that some of its members at the front actually pulled Fazer off the stage and into the audience. Dappy leapt in to retrieve his band-mate. Fazer looked over and saw B watching from the wings. The look of joy and pride in their mentor’s face was clear. Fazer would later recall the evening as one of the best moments of his life. The following day, he met up with B to discuss which studio the band might move to as the contract for their current studio was nearing its end. It was the last time a member of N-Dubz would see its founder alive. The day after, Fazer and Dappy had to break into B’s house after becoming concerned about his disappearance, when he had failed to collect Dappy’s mother from the airport as planned. It was Fazer who discovered B’s body. He had died sitting in front of the television, with the set tuned in to Channel U. It transpired he had died from a heart attack. Tulisa meanwhile was elsewhere, unaware of the tragedy.
    B had almost predicted the day was imminent. He would sometimes say to the band, ‘One day you guys will be here on your own and I won’t be here to look after you,’ or remind them ‘I won’t be here forever.’ As with so much of what B had told the group, these predictions turned out to be true. He had seemed ill in the time leading up to his passing. He kept coughing, remembered Fazer, and also vomited a few times. The signs, it was only clear in retrospect, had been there for some time. Dappy was naturally devastated when he realised his father had died. At first he did not want to enter the room Fazer had discovered the body in. After a while he walked in and helped lay B’s body on the sofa. He covered the body with a blanket and then left the room, absolutely gutted. The next thing that he and Fazer had to do was decide how to break the news to Tulisa, who was busy filming Dubplate Drama at the time. It was not to be an easy moment.
    Ironically, she was filming a scene in which her character had burst into tears after learning someone she loved had died. She cut an onion up when she had to cry during a scene. When merely cutting the onion didn’t do the trick, she simply held the two halves of the onion directly against her eyes. The production team also used a tear stick to help spark the sobs. Art was mirroring life in the most painful way. Tulisa had found that the best way to prepare for such a scene was to imagine that she really had been bereaved in real life. Just before she filmed the scene she had been sitting imagining how she would feel if she lost someone dear to her. Meanwhile, Fazer and Dappy were discussing how best to tell her that her beloved Uncle B had died. That same day, she turned her mobile phone on to discover a rash of texts from her two band-mates. All the messages said were that they needed to speak to her soon about something important.
    She immediately feared the worst and phoned Dappy to ask what the matter was. He would not tell Tulisa over the phone and instead arranged to drive to the filming location to tell her in person. Meanwhile, the cast and crew members did their best to comfort Tulisa as her mind raced through a series of tragic possibilities. A feeling inside her grew. She tried to phone other family members as she waited in the hope that they could tell her what had happened. As fate would have it she could not get through to anyone by phone. When Dappy and Fazer arrived, Tulisa could not wait for them to get to the heart of the matter and tell her what was going on. She quickly lost her patience and shouted at them,