You’re an Essex girl born and bred, in fact your YouTube channel was started in your Basildon bedroom… how do you feel about your hometown?

I do get this weird sense when I’m on the train and c2c says the next station is Basildon, I get this lovely wave of like, “oh I’m home”. Or when I drive past the sign on the A13, it feels great.

I don’t live in Essex anymore, but I did for 24 years and there’s always that sense of hometown pride. Even in Bas Vegas. I try and come back as often as I can. I try and come back every weekend when it’s possible, to see my family. Part of me misses it a lot.

I was at Bromfords school and it was an experience. I think I wasn’t ready to enjoy something like school. But then I think, what teenager is? I definitely didn’t make the most of school. I was bullied. I was teased. I’m not alone in that, I think a lot of teenagers are. But I didn’t appreciate how simple life is when you’re at school. It would be nice to go back to my school one day. I did take copies of my book in, when it came out.

Before your channel took off, you were working as a waitress, right?

When I was in college – Seevic – I worked at McDonald’s in Pitsea. And then after that, after I completely had enough of being bullied, I worked at the cafe at BHS in Basildon. That was 2010. I did that for two years until I got another job as a cafe manager somewhere else.

And you were making videos all the time?

When I first started my channel, my biggest dream, as in the unreachable, that you just think about at night, was 100,000 subscribers. That was my goal, if I could make that I’d already achieved more than I could ever have imagined. And then it happened, and then I was like, I’ll be happy with 200,000 and then that happened. And it just kept going up and up and up. At the time I was still living at home with my dad and people have only just started now to understand that you can make a living from it. But back in 2012 my dad was just like, “what are you doing?! You can’t quit your full time job to make videos, you can’t earn money from that!” And I was like, “you can if you work really hard, and get lots of viewers”. And he said, “it’s not worth the risk. One month you might have a good income the next month you might do terrible”. He said: “You’re making a big mistake if you quit.” And then I quit at the end of 2013. And it worked out. I started to earn more money from videos than I did from my monthly paycheck.

So, the album, villains, how did it come about?

Since 2012 I’ve released five EPs, but I’ve always wanted to make an album, I’ve always believed in the album. I know a lot of pop artists these days, they’ll just release single after single after single and then there won’t be an album, but I grew up always wanting some of my favourite pop bands to release one. I guess it finally felt like the right time. I toyed with the idea of releasing the album years ago, but it never felt like I found my distinct sound before.

I know that when I created my YouTube channel in 2012, I did it because I wanted to put my own music out there at some point. But I only ever dreamed of having the audience I do now, being able to play the venues that I do. I’ve been able to play shows supporting other acts at the O2 arena at Wembley, Shepherd’s Bush Empire, this is stuff that I dreamed of.

you supported Busted? How was that?

The guys were absolutely lovely. They were so hard working, so professional. I learned so much on that tour. And I’m so thankful that I did it. There were times that I thought this is too big. I came very close to turning it down, just because I was very anxious about it. I was going from playing to 500 people to 20,000. Who weren’t there for me, who didn’t all know who I was, who just wanted to see the main act. As a support act, it’s very difficult to win over a crowd and I learned a lot. I had a couple of technical difficulties on some of the nights. I think your backing track cutting out at Wembley arena in front 15,000 people on the first night of the tour, that’s always going to be the hardest thing that happens on tour, right? If you can cope with that, keep singing, even though there’s no track underneath you, everything else is going to be fine.

I love being on tour. I just can’t wait to be on the road again with Villains.

Do you have a favourIte track on Villains?

It’s like having 11 children. I love them equally.