From prison to pop diva

FEW people would see a conviction for attempted armed robbery and a 13-month spell in jail as a route to a pop career, but that's exactly how a former Walthamstow shopgirl has been transformed into a soul diva with a major record deal and the promise of stardom.

In just three years, Simone Locker, now 21, has gone from the brink of a life of crime to becoming Felon - her new stage name, and a pun so bad it's almost criminal.

On 5 May 1999 Locker was in the local convenience store in Walthamstow, where she had been working part time for a few months. Some weeks earlier, she had been befriended by a local gangster who had dragged her into a plot to rob the store using her inside knowledge.

"I was so naive," she says now.

"Some guys know how to work a girl and after the event I realised I had been used." The police were tipped off and the armed trio of raiders were trapped within seconds of entering the store by hordes of waiting officers.

At the police station after the raid, Locker was quickly made aware that her role had not gone unnoticed and that she would be required for more than just a witness statement.

"It was complete and utter madness, but I thought I was invisible as I didn't actually do the robbery," she says. After seven months on bail, she was sentenced to two and a half years' imprisonment for her part in the foiled plot. Her mother, a legal secretary, was devastated and her floods of tears in the courtroom affected Simone deeply. "I realised I'd destroyed a lot of people's lives by what I'd done."

HER jail sentence began in Holloway prison - and her two weeks there have left a mental scar. "There ain't nothing like Holloway," says Locker. "It must be the worst prison in the whole of Europe.

You don't get to do anything and you can come out feeling like a nutcase.

They feed you drugs like water. You say you can't sleep and you are given Valium."

She was so shocked by the prison regime that she took a decision to sort her life out. "I sat down and thought about what was happening to me.

Prisons make the strong stronger and the weak weaker. I wasn't going to become a victim, so I had to become stronger."

Locker was moved to a working prison, Bullwood Hall in Essex, and it was here that she started to remake herself.

Tipping the scales at 14 stone, her life makeover began with a strict weight-loss plan.

But it was her love of music that would prove the real catalyst. The more relaxed prison ethos allowed her to listen to her CD collection, and although her obsessive singing along drove other inmates mad, everyone around her was quick to compliment the gifted vocalist. It was no surprise when she won the annual Christmas talent show.

By April 2000, her good behaviour was rewarded with a place at open prison East Sutton Park in Kent, where Locker made an impression for the wrong reason when she refused to make tea for a prison tutor, feeling she was being exploited.

The acting prison governor, Barbara Taylor, called Locker to her office.

She turned the interview to her advantage by pleading with the governor to find her some show-business contacts. The governor did so by inviting agent Terry Armstrong to the prison.

IN a Pop Idol-style audition in the prison gym, Locker's a cappella version of Peggy Lee's Fever prompted the offer of a contract two weeks later.

Her excited mother advised her to "sign the goddamn thing quick" and the prison made day-release arrangements for Locker to work with Armstrong in the recording studio.

The end result was a deal with Serious Records and the recording of her debut single Get Out, all achieved while still serving time at Her Majesty's Pleasure.

The garage-style song is, of course, based on her whole experience, with reference to how she was "blind" to the implications of her failed crime.

Now oozing urban glamour in her record label's west London HQ, Locker, four stone lighter at a svelte size 10, is more than happy with her lot. "Someone is looking over me. In a sick way, I'm glad I went to prison. It was a blessing in disguise. If I had got away with the robbery, God knows what I would have tried next."

Get Out, by Felon, is released on 4 March.

Copyright 2002
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