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Winning X Factor doesn’t guarantee success in pop music (the first winner recently performed in a Pizza Express). But since her victory a year ago, Alexandra Burke – through canny management, hard work and personal ambition – has become one of Britain’s most successful popstars. She tells TONY CLAYTON-LEAabout her year of living famously

‘I’M GOOD, darling, I’m good. Just done my sound check and I’m very happy.” I’d say she is good and very happy. This time last year, Alexandra Burke was toiling away at the coalface of The X Factor, the must-see family entertainment show that is in equal measures car-crash television, gladiatorial karaoke competition and – if you can bear to look beyond the obvious, and there’s an awful lot of the obvious – a glance into how the meretricious, manipulative pop music industry skilfully packages its products.