Alexandra Burke: Since X Factor, it takes me an hour to go round the corner for a pint of milk

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High on style: Alexandra Burke is 'sleek, groomed and healthy as a racehorse'

X Factor baggage: Alexandra doesn’t like to travel without some form of security

Do you think the X Factor contestants are told to blub? You imagine a line of the show's highly-paid producers hissing at John and Edward and telling them to weep like little children or they'll make them do Black Sabbath's greatest hits next week.

But: "Oh, no, no, no one's telling them to cry," insists Alexandra Burke, last year's 21-year-old X-Factor champion, whose debut album this week beat Whitney Houston and Michael Bublé to number one in the UK charts.

She pauses; flicks her perfect Cleopatra bob with perfectly manicured nails. "I mean, they do advise you not to be too professional. They say, whatever emotion you feel, just let it out. If you're acting too professional, that will be your biggest downfall.

"It's like, people on that stage are crying for their dreams. All that anger or sadness or anxiety that you might feel in the week builds up, and builds up, and then it's just that one moment on a Saturday night. On live TV. [The producers] do say: don't repress it. Otherwise you don't look human."

Burke is a fine, if slightly naive, ambassador for the show. No, Simon Cowell is not a smug, over-pampered Svengali but a "great guy and a great boss" (Burke signed a deal reportedly worth £1 million with Cowell's company Syco, of which she apparently gets £150,000 up front).

"People find it hard to believe when I say that I really like him but it's true." Cheryl Cole, who bought Burke a £5,000 luxury holiday for her 21st birthday, is still her mentor and "friend" and "always on the other end of a phone for me".

I meet Burke at County Hall, where she's promoting a mobile phone company and wearing skinny grey jeans with multiple slashes up the leg, a cropped jacket of soft-as-butter leather, and teetering cheetah-print heels.

She is as sleek and groomed and healthy-looking as a racehorse. Clearly she has been styled - it's a designer boutique meets inner-city nail bar kind of look - but does she also feel "created"? How much control do X Factor contestants have over their "look"?

"It's about 50-50," admits Burke. "If they [the stylists and producers] think your look is wrong, they'll correct that.

"But I'm a very strong-minded person, and if they tried to mould me into something I'm not, I'd ask for my deal to be taken away."

Really? All £1 million of it? "Yeah! Who wants to be controlled by someone else? It's not Simon who's out there selling the music. We once had a conversation where I made it very plain. I said: 'If I don't like something you're saying, you will know about it. I'm not one to beat around the bush, I don't even let my mum and dad tell me what to do.' And Simon said: 'Alex, if I am ever wrong - which I never am - I will apologise to you. But if you're wrong, you need to learn to apologise to me.' Which is fair enough, isn't it?"

On sales alone, however, Burke is already a serious player.

Last year's Hallelujah, her X-Factor winner's single, shifted 105,000 copies in just one day, beating the European record held by 2006 X Factor champ Leona Lewis.

Hallelujah was also the top-selling single of 2008, and by January this year had sold one million copies in the UK - a first for a British female singer.

Meanwhile, there's that number one album, Overcome, to celebrate, and even talk of Burke supporting her new friend Bey-oncé on the second leg of the American diva's European tour later this year.

Not bad for a girl from an Islington council estate who used to scrape a living singing at weddings and bar mitzvahs and who claims to have "had the door slammed in my face many, many times" by the UK record industry.

"I took so many knock-backs," she says. "I was told by a specific person in a management company that he wouldn't take me on because he had 'way too many' black people on his books. Like, huh? Why do you have to talk about me in terms of my skin colour?

"That's what the title of my album is about really. I've managed to overcome a lot of obstacles to get where I am today. There are lots of things about me that people still don't know, but yeah, I've never given up trying to achieve this life."

There are "lots of things" we do know about Burke and much that has surfaced in the less reputable Sunday newspapers.

She accepts the tabloid digging as an occupational hazard but dismisses most of the stories as "absolute lies", particularly those concerning her father. According to one, David Burke has fathered 12 children with seven women.

"It's horrible, all that," says Burke defensively. "I speak to my father every day. He came back way before X Factor. He really did " She trails off, visibly upset.

At home, her maternal grandfather became a kind of father to her instead.

The three children - Alexandra, her elder sister Sheneice, now 24, and younger brother Aaron, 16 - were often looked after by their grandfather while their mother, Melissa Bell, also a singer, performed with the music collective Soul II Soul.

"I was a bit of a loose cannon at about 14, though," says Burke. "I was a real wild child. When school was finished, I'd do my singing classes and then I'd be like, 'Right, let's dance, girl!' My sister and I would sneak out of the house and go to the Ministry of Sound.

"We'd be raving in over-25 clubs at the age of 14. My mother never knew where we were. When my grandfather was looking after us, we'd just put pillows down our beds and sneak in and out and I don't think he ever knew."

When her grandfather died last year, "I didn't want to get out of bed for days. He was my backbone. His death has been the hardest obstacle to overcome and I still don't think I've done it".

Burke has now moved to a rented flat in Barnet, partly because she was getting "a lot of very negative hassle" from kids on the estate in Islington, some of them friends of her brother.

"That estate has completely changed since I was a kid," she explains. "Nowadays the children aren't brought up the same way, and if you step on their foot, they'll stab you for it. I find it shocking, to be honest. Really disturbing.

"There used to be a sense of community, but now it's the kids controlling the parents and it's a shame."

Her brother was at school with Ben Kinsella, the 16-year-old who was stabbed to death last year.

Speaking to me, she is quite stoical about her personal experience on the estate: "They threw stuff at my car, they shouted at me. They were just boys being boys. I wasn't going to put up with it for ever."

But before I meet her, I'm told by a PR man that she doesn't like "going outside" at all these days without some form of security.

Earlier this month, Leona Lewis was punched by a man, reportedly an X Factor reject, at a public book signing in Piccadilly. How much did that incident rattle Burke?

"I am cautious about where I go and how much I go out," she admits.

"I mean, I don't ring management for a security guard to go down the road but I tend not to go out very much by myself. It can take an hour or more to go round the corner for a pint of milk, so generally I get someone else to do it.

"The Leona attack is obviously going to freak out any artist. It was at a book signing, it couldn't have been prevented. It does make you nervous."

There have been other major hurdles this year. Her brother, whom she describes as "a bit of a lost soul", made a widely reported suicide attempt in July but is now, claims Burke, "much, much better. He stays with me a lot. I try to get him out of that estate as much as possible".

And her mother, who has kidney failure as a result of diabetes, still has gruelling weekly dialysis sessions while she waits on the transplant list.

"My nan and my great-nan both had exactly the same thing," says Burke, matter-of-factly. "I try to look after myself really well because it's obviously in the family. In all three cases, the diabetes was brought on by pregnancy but I think they all had a very sweet tooth, too."

Yet there have been "way more" ups than downs this year, she says. "I can't believe that I'm a recording artist. I can't believe that I've got an album out."

She wouldn't mind a boyfriend, though, and here she slips effortlessly again into that X Factor language of dreams, and tears, and love.

"At the moment I'm alone and happy that way but if love knocks on my door, I won't be too busy for it. You can't say goodbye to love. When that day comes, I'll be proud enough to be open about it and tell you all."

Wow. It is a factory, The X Factor. But if anyone can break the mould, perhaps it's this dynamic, spirited young girl from north London.

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