I’ll never get over the way Simon Cowell treated me. If I’d been Liam Payne’s age it might have finished me: Steve Brookstein breaks silence on truth of what happened after he won X Factor – and the ‘vindictive’ final blow

Wembley, it certainly wasn’t. It was also not entirely clear whether customers at The Courtyard pub in Morpeth had any idea of ​​the identity of the gray-bearded crooner who entertained them on a Sunday evening last month.

But for all the differences between this intimate performance and his blockbuster of the past, Steve Brookstein – the first ever winner of The X Factor – tells me that despite many years of torment and depression, he couldn’t be happier.

‘I have now found peace. God’s plans and all that. Sometimes you just have to accept that bad guys win.’

The villain in Steve’s story, it soon becomes clear, is none other than Simon Cowell.

Because although next week marks 20 years since Brookstein, now 56, won the reality TV show – landing a £1million recording contract in front of ten million ITV viewers – it’s clear that the experience of finding fame through Cowell is one that deeply affected him.

He tells me he is only now getting over the trauma of being humiliated on screen by X Factor judges Sharon Osbourne and Louis Walsh, who branded him ‘a fake’ and a ‘pub singer’, and then as a national loser after he was brutally deposed by Cowell. record label within a year.

‘I’m at peace with it. The only thing I found difficult and had to do was forgive. But for years I couldn’t forgive it.

‘The X Factor gave me everything I didn’t want: humiliation. It felt like an albatross around my neck.’

But when the ticker tape fell to the stage as Brookstein was declared the winner of the show, his first feelings were those of elation. “In my head I said to myself, ‘Nothing can go wrong now.’

How wrong he was. Brookstein’s experiences may be decades old, but his words have more resonance today, given the tragic death of troubled One Direction star Liam Payne, 31. Payne was just 14 when he first came to public attention on The X Factor, four years after Brookstein.

“My heart went out to his family,” he said. ‘I was lucky because I was older. I was 36, I had life experience.

‘If I had been on X Factor at his age I could easily have seen myself going down the same path as him.

‘I’ve spoken about my own struggles with my mental health. I’ve been to those dark places. It’s a tragic coincidence.”

While six million people voted for Brookstein to beat opera group G4 during that glittering final, just seven months later he was desperate to cancel his contract with Cowell, feeling he was being mismanaged by the music mogul.

He has said he attended an industry party after his first album was released in May 2005 and chatted with Cowell who was also there.

‘He [Cowell] said, “You’re so lucky you didn’t get in.” [the show] this year the standard is so much better. Last year was a bit of a joke.” It was unnecessary. I’d just had a number one album.’

Not long after, Cowell pushed Brookstein before he could jump, brutally announcing on television that he “couldn’t sell records.”

The public humiliation that followed came quickly. Mocked online, virtually every door in the industry was slammed, such was Cowell’s influence.

Brookstein was offered just £12,500 in compensation for the lost £1 million deal, in return for signing a non-disclosure agreement.

Furious, he refused and walked away with nothing. Commercial success has eluded him since – hence the small gig in Morpeth. But he still manages to make a living from music.

On December 11, the actual date of the anniversary, Brookstein – who is happily married to his wife of 18 years, jazz singer Eileen Hunter, and has two teenage children – will sing at a coffee shop in west London.

The audience, he says, is complimentary.

“People are still amazed that I can sing,” he says. ‘I’m not blind to the fact that time hasn’t been kind to me, probably because of stress. I’m losing my hair and I’m overweight, which is not good.

‘I know people look at me and say, ‘Oh God, he’s changed, he was so fit.’ I have gone from 11 stone to 16 stone, I wear glasses and have a gray beard. But I enjoy it [performing].’

His current satisfaction certainly contrasts with his X Factor experience, as he reflects today: ‘I did fine before The X Factor. I had supported Dionne Warwick at The Fairfield Halls in Croydon just before my first audition and was offered a gig supporting Lionel Richie on December 11, 2004, which turned out to be the night of the final, so I had to turn it down. I could have been the support act for Lionel Richie. I think about it often because it’s my sliding doors moment.

‘My father and my wife had both seen the advertisement for this new talent show. I thought it would be a good opportunity to meet new people in the industry.’

Instead, he was bruised by the process. He has mentioned how Sharon Osbourne called him the c-word during rehearsals, while Louis Walsh even said he looked like serial killer Fred West on live television. “It was pretty shocking,” Brookstein says. ‘There was so much hatred towards me.

‘The hardest part was when I was bullied online. People were sending me emails and links to websites and there were all these pictures of me and Fred West. It was all in the [online] chat rooms. And you’re not ready for that in real life. The worst thing you ever experienced was at school, and this was a national issue.

“I never wanted to kill myself, but I felt like if I didn’t have Eileen and the kids, I could.” Brookstein is unequivocal: the treatment he received in the program showed a callous disregard for him as a person.

‘There was no duty of care [from the bosses]. What they learned from series one was not how to look after the artists, but how to protect the business,” he says.

‘[After the first series] everyone had to sign non-disclosure agreements straight away, they were much more monitored than in series one. We were just fodder for the show.” Three weeks after the final, Steve was at number one with ‘Against all Odds’, a cover of a Phil Collins song. Yet he was already so disillusioned that he admits he felt no joy when his manager Tim Byrne – who also helped form One Direction – called him with the news.

“He told me to remember the moment, but I never wanted to release the song. I couldn’t celebrate.

‘On The X Factor it was just so competitive, everyone was just climbing over bodies to get to the top, that’s how I felt. The contestants were all great, it was just about the atmosphere of the show, it was so much about the ratings.”

In July 2005 he approached Cowell to try to get out of his contract: ‘I had seen contracts and I was also aware of what happens when contracts go wrong. The record label always has the power.

“You might as well just sign it and hope they don’t screw you, but they screwed me.

‘They told me they would take the time to do my album, but then they just threw away an album of covers. I can laugh about it now, but at the time I was absolutely furious.

‘I asked to leave the label and then Simon decided to go on TV and said he was going to drop me. I didn’t know how vengeful they were. I just said give me £50,000 so I can go away and start my own thing.

‘They said no, we’ll offer you £12,500. For a million pound record deal? How does that work?

“They wanted me to sign an NDA, but I said no. It’s not about getting ripped off and all the money, it’s about the humiliation afterwards.

‘A few months later I did a few gigs, one in Monaco at the Grand Prix, it was on [driver] Kimi Raikkonen’s yacht, all the big stars were there, Nigel Mansell, Eddie Jordan, it was a real performance.

‘And the following week my agent asked me as a favor to do a gig at his friend’s pub in Cornwall. I enjoyed doing it and they took care of me.”

He added: ‘But then an article appeared mocking my appearance in the pub. It went on for days. One newspaper put my head on a farmer’s body and said X Tractor, that kind of thing.

“All the good work, all those jobs, I had so many that were then quit. They just destroy you.”

What would he say to Cowell if he saw him today?

‘I wouldn’t have anything to say to him. I would like him to apologize. That’s all I’ve ever wanted: an apology, but I’ll never get one.”

These days he admits he often thinks about what life would have been like if he hadn’t been on The X Factor.

“I think I would be in a better place. I have no doubt in my mind: I would be a better singer now, I would be fitter now, I wouldn’t be suffering from depression now.

‘I’m not going to say it has ruined me, but it has damaged my credibility because before The X Factor I had a lot of good things going for me. But I can’t regret it because it is what it is. All the tears I ever shed were for my wife and family. It was never about me.”

He will soon release his version of Peter Gabriel’s ‘Don’t Give Up’, following the death of his beloved father Errol this year: ‘I just want to keep going. The only way I ever got through this is to be grateful for small mercies.”

Buy tickets for Steve’s upcoming acoustic show in London at: www.stevebrookstein.com