Bristol singer speaks of life after The X Factor

Last year, Bristol had Girl Band – four female singers who got through to the final 12 in the popular TV talent show, The X-Factor.

This year, the city was represented by another talented female songstress – 19-year-old Nicole Jackson.

Nicole, who lives in St George with her mum, brother and sister, wowed the judges throughout this year's competition, but her final audition was not enough to take her through to the finals.

She made it through the tough first audition, in front of a huge audience, then impressed the judges with her original versions of songs in the bootcamp stage.

Nicole, who works part-time as a youth worker at the City Academy in Redfield, also got through to the bootcamp the year before.

But this year she got through to the final 24, as one of the final six girls in pop star Dannii Minogue's group.

For the final round of auditions, contestants travelled all over the world with their prospective mentors – and Nicole was flown out to a luxury hotel in Dubai.

Nicole, who won the Evening Post Search For a Star talent competition in 2008, said: "It was completely surreal. We spent four days there and the hotel was fantastic. It wasn't even a five-star hotel, I think it was something like a 10-star place. There were dolphins in the sea outside and Dannii's room was like a big flat.

"I shared a room with one of the other contestants, Rachel, and we had a massive plasma TV. It was great."

Dannii revealed when the girls got there that her guest judge was her sister – superstar Kylie Minogue.

"On the TV, it shows us waiting to find out who it was," said Nicole. "But in real life they kept us waiting for ages, and we had no idea it would be her. They were really sweet together, very cute – they obviously had that special family bond."

Nicole and the other girls sang one song each to the sisters, but then had to wait a day to find out if they had been chosen as one of the final three.

"It was the longest night of my life," said Nicole. "I had sung Stevie Wonder's Lately, but because I hadn't had an instrumental version of the song to practise with it really threw me and I messed up. I knew I was going home. I was in a bit of a daze – when I watched it back I thought it would be worse than it was."

N icole was the first in to see Dannii to find out her fate, although on TV it was shown in a different order. She waited for everyone to find out how they had done.

"It was a bit of a strange atmosphere, because some people felt really depressed and some people were on top of the world," she said. "I am really happy for the others, and I still speak to Lucie and Rachel. I was really disappointed that I didn't get through, but I knew it was because I had made a mistake, not because I was no good, so that helped."

She said that Dannii had a much longer chat with her than was shown on the television show.

"Dannii was great. She told me not to give up, and that she really believed I could be big and make it mainstream. She was gutted that I had messed up. She gave me lots of confidence," said Nicole.

She felt the bootcamp stages had gone much better, where she had the confidence to take a song and give it her own original twist.

Nicole said: "What the TV didn't show was all the comments that everyone gets – Simon Cowell said some really nice things to me about the way I sang."

Nicole started singing at the age of 11, writing songs in her dad's home studio. Since then she has performed whenever she can, in clubs and at weddings across the city. Now she hopes her performance in The X Factor will propel her career forward.

"Dannii called me yesterday out of the blue – I was in bed and I was like, 'Sorry, Dannii who?' She said she still wants to follow my progress and she has a writer that wants to work with me who saw me at the bootcamp stages," said Nicole.

"I have got myself a manager, and hopefully with all this put together things will start to go really well. I would love to be a mainstream solo artist and Dannii said she thinks it could happen. To hear someone like her tell me that makes me feel great.

"I have definitely got my own style of singing, so maybe The X Factor is not for me. There were loads of great singers at the bootcamp who were amazing and didn't get through, it isn't always the best people who do well on these shows.

"It could all work out OK for me in the end, that's why I don't feel too bad to have been knocked out."