Pop superstar Rita Ora had it all.
Burgeoning chart career, fashion icon status and TV darling, she was the advertisers’ dream who could take her pick from the countless lucrative endorsement deals.
But on November 28, 2015, her world came crashing down after an intruder broke into her London home she shares with sister Elena while they slept, making off with £200,000 of her personal possessions.
Now speaking for the first time about her ordeal, Rita has revealed she turned to therapy to get her life back on track.
In an exclusive interview for my Bizarre Life podcast, Rita also follows the lead of Princes William and Harry by opening up about mental health and how she deals with the dark side of fame.
She said: “It still affects me, even today, going to sleep and things like that because just knowing that there was a stranger in your home is never really a nice feeling.
“It was harder for my sister also because she had the actual face-to-face encounter with the robber so it was difficult to get over that and we did the court cases and things, yeah, which was really scary.
“It was awful and you’re in a home that you’ve made yourself that you now know isn’t safe, so I’ve definitely upped my security about 200 percent.”
The burglar, Charaf Elmouudden, was jailed for five years in June last year as Rita sought help to recover from the ordeal.
She said: “It’s helped me actually talking about it to be honest, to kind of like get the scariness away from it.”
Like Wills and Harry, Rita admits opening up about her concerns – be it her court drama or the stresses of the music industry – prevents her getting mentally bogged down.
Rita said: “Everybody needs a bit of quiet space in their brain and this job there’s a lot of go, go, go.
“You’re in a different country and different this and different that and it’s normal for a girl to really kind of lose control sometimes mentally when your life is moving so much and I talk about it openly because I know I’m not the only one that goes through it.
“It’s like a girl stressing about her studies, it’s like it’s a normal thing to happen to someone, which I didn’t know was normal until recently, so yeah, you get your ups and downs – but the ups are great.”
Despite the trauma she’s been through, I’m happy to reveal Rita has a mojo back. Big time.
Her beaming smile and cheeky sense of humour are hard to ignore when we met, no doubt buoyed by the release of her first single in two years, a collaboration with Ed Sheeran.
Speaking how her incredible new track Your Song came about, she said: “Ed was asking about the album and I just said ‘you know I’d really love my friends to be involved’.
“He sent me an idea of the record when it was really scratched and I said ‘this is amazing I’d love to work on it’ and then we physically both went into the studio and collaborated on it in London with Steve Mac, the producer, who is also amazing.”
Rita could finally release new music after ending her record deal with Jay Z‘s label Roc Nation, who stunted her progress in the charts by delaying her highly-anticipated follow up to her No1 debut album, Ora.
The Kosovo-born singer insists she left on good terms with the rapper to join Atlantic, despite her music career going stale under his influence.
She was also dragged into Jay’s rumored brief split from wife Beyonce, after Rita was linked to the infamous “Becky with the good hair” lyric in the diva’s song Lemonade – who conspiracists claimed was Jay-Z’s “other woman”.
On her departure from Roc Nation she said: “I mean, the truth is it was a respectful separation.
“It is a very respectful separation and there is no bad blood whatsoever. 150 per cent.
“I’d hug Beyonce if we bumped into each other – there is always just smiles and love I mean from every direction, honestly.”
Perhaps that’s the next collaboration.
Rita isn’t a one-hit wonder when it comes to the music charts.
But it’s a different story with TV – and that’s her own choice.
The singer says her one series as a permanent X Factor judge in 2015 will be her last because she “killed it” by mentoring the show’s winning act Louisa Johnson.