X-Factor winner Sam Bailey heads to Oxford to star in Chicago at the New Theatre

Sam Bailey is watching Jeremy Kyle when I finally catch up with her. “Just checking in with the family,” she laughs, turning off the TV.

Enormously refreshing and largely unaffected by her tumultuous journey through the world of music, showbiz and fame, Sam Bailey is now doing it her way.

Breaking away from SYCO and X Factor, when Simon Cowell failed to renew her record contract recently, instead Sam landed one of the biggest lead roles in the musical theatre industry – Matron ‘Mama Morton’ in Chicago – and, in so doing, is fulfilling her dreams.

“I’ve been wanting to do musical theatre since I was young,” she tells me, “and now I’m finally getting around to it. It’s been on the bucket list since I went to see Les Miserables which changed all my perceptions.”

The irony that she will be playing a prison officer hasn’t been lost on Sam, who worked in HM Prison Gartree when she first auditioned for X Factor.

“I don’t know if it will help or if it’s a coincidence. I just auditioned like everyone else but they must have seen something in me. I was just really pleased to get the role,” she tells me.

Opening in Oxford next week, this will be Sam’s first acting role and therefore one she’s understandably nervous about. But she says the cast have been great and very understanding about her debut.

But then presumably as soon as she starts singing they understood exactly why she was cast, hitting the audience as hard as the former X Factor judges when she first stepped on the stage. And that voice is still carrying her through now.

“When on stage singing you still need to have an emotional connection with the audience. So I’m just starting to connect with Moma Morton and get my teeth stuck in because she is brilliant to play and I can’t wait to just get out and do it. It’s going to be incredible.”

So what does she like about the part?

“Matron ‘Moma Morton’ is a great character. She is a man in a bra – everyone knows she is the boss, but she has a caring side too, it’s just that no one else sees it because she never lets her guard down and everyone respects her – she rules the roost.

“And the cast have gone out of their way to help me progress. I just take the mickey – ‘just come to me for dance lessons okay. I can shake some moves’,” she laughs.

And yet despite her fame and fortune, Sam has stayed as down-to-earth as ever: “I’ve got my hot water tap and my downstairs shower and toilet now, and a new baby, so I have the utmost respect for X Factor – it came along and flipped my life around and I could not be happier.

“But then being in the prison service made me quite thick-skinned.”

Is that the end of her musical career then? “No,” she says surprised. “I’m writing a new album at the moment and have been out to LA to meet my new record company so its been a pretty full on few months.”

She must miss her family though?

“My kids are used to it because as a prison officer I’d do long shifts and see them at weekends, and my husband is doing an absolutely amazing job at home and is happy to look after the children while I’m away – he loves it, so it’s a great little set up.

“It makes us all appreciate each other more and I’m much more patient with my children now. I don’t snap at them about tidying their rooms, I just say, ‘come here and give me a cuddle’. It does make you realise how lucky you are.”

While Sam is in Oxford rehearsing and performing, it’s her children’s half term so she has booked an apartment for them all here.

“We are all so excited about Chicago opening in Oxford, but of course I am nervous about it as well. It is my theatre debut after all, but everything is going to plan and I’m really, really looking forward to it.

“I just remind myself that singing has always been my outlet and release so if I wasn’t singing as a job I would be out gigging somewhere.

“Because in the music industry you are someone and then the next minute you aren’t, so I’m being smart and as long as I keep grafting, I will keep working. “And I’ve got three kids. Music companies don’t care about that. They need you at their beck and call – go to China. I didn’t want to do that any more. This way I get to do what I want to do, and what I choose. I can’t wait.”

SEE IT
Chicago runs at the New Theatre from February 12-20.
Box office 0844 8713020 or go to atgtickets.com/oxford