Tulisa has said her “life fell apart” after a fake sheikh set up a drugs bust.
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The N-Dubz star recounted the infamous 2013 incident on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here, where Tulisa was initially arrested on suspicion of supplying Class A drugs, of which she later denied. Her charges were eventually dismissed, whilst “fake sheikh” and former undercover reporter Mazher Mahmood was charged with misleading the court in 2015.
Speaking to former Strictly Come Dancing star and fellow comeptitor Oti Mabuse, Tulisa recalled: “The guy’s name was Mahmood and basically, I was approached by a big movie company and they sent me a tweet or a DM from their official account to audition me for a movie role… I’d dabbled in acting, so this opportunity for me was huge.”
However, Tulisa said it was all a “lie”, and that the fictional film company “had me dangling on the end of a string”. She went on to allege that every time she would meet with the team, they would claim “we need some drugs”.
“After months and months, eventually they got a number and it was of someone that wasn’t even a drug dealer, it was an aspiring movie producer and I wanted to make a hook up as well for that person, but I didn’t know anyone that could do that,” she continued.
“The long story short is they ended up ordering £800 worth of cocaine from the number that I had given them. Then before I knew it, I was being arrested in the concern of the selling of Class A drugs and I was facing four years in prison.”
After her arrest, Tulisa revealed she lost “all my endorsements” over the incident and “my life fell apart”.
However, Tulisa went on to claim that Mahmood had tampered with evidence, leading to her charges being dropped and his eventual arrest.
“When it came to the trial, I’d had a conversation with one of their drivers, I was being recorded but I didn’t know, I was saying how anti-drugs I am, so they were very aware of my feelings towards drugs,” she said.
Whilst the driver first confirmed that Tulisa was anti-drugs in a statement, Tulisa then claimed that Mahmood forced the driver to change his statement in the run-up to the trial.
He was eventually jailed for 15 months in 2016 after he was found guilty of conspiring to pervert the course of justice in relation to Tulisa’s case.
Tulisa hinted at the 2013 trial in an interview with NME in 2019, where she spoke about her tumulutous relationship with experiencing fame in public.
“You know what, it’s been a shit time – a really shit time, as people know,” she told NME. “But I just feel like I wanna put it to bed now. Because as well as the celebrity side of things, you almost start being known for being ‘that person that this thing happened to’. And you end up having that stigma that you carry with you wherever you go.
“People remember me, then remember that happening. So, during this time, I wanna make it as much about the music as possible so that people can forget all about that time. I’ve moved on from that – my aim now is to make everyone else move on with me.”
