Leona Lewis then and now: Baby news, Simon Cowell feud and their current relationship

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Before Leona Lewis bagged the £1million record deal on X Factor, she was a waitress in Pizza Hut trying to save up for studio sessions.The X Factor winner, who celebrated her 37th birthday this week, was finding it difficult to secure a deal after leaving the BRIT school, so she auditioned for the smash hit show.

From the get go, Leona was the favourite and won by a landslide back in 2006, defeating Ray Quinn in the final, under the mentorship of Simon Cowell, writes The Mirror.

Leona's cover version of Kelly Clarkson's A Moment Like This made it to Christmas number one, selling more copies than the rest of that week's top 40 combined, and she was immediately signed to Simon's Syco record label.Since then she's been a roaring success, selling over 35 million records worldwide, and she has been nominated for six BRIT Awards and three Grammys and won two MOBO awards.Her debut studio album, Spirit, became the fourth-best selling of the 2000s and lead single Bleeding Love spent seven weeks at UK number one.However, in 2014, the singer announced that she would be parting ways with Simon's label Syco after falling out of love with the record label.She told The Independent at the time: "Simon Cowell has been incredible but at the end of a day it’s a huge label now.""I felt like at that stage all they were doing was holding me back from fulfilling my potential, to ask me to do a covers album was… there was no love in it."They weren’t giving me any choice.

So no, I said, we’re done now. It’s all good, I’ve still got so much love but we’re done."Simon probably doesn’t even know what went on in that way, but I felt disrespected and I felt it was a very callous way to act when all I was trying to do was do what I loved.