Keisha Buchanan has revealed she was the victim of a shocking kidnapping when she was just 16 years old.
The Sugababes were just starting out at the time and Keisha was not allowed to take any time off, instead being thrown into shows and studio sessions.
She was snatched after school, around the time she was meant to be taking her GCSE exams, resulting in her parents pulling her out of school to cope with the trauma.
While on the Live, Laugh, Luke… with Luke Hamnett podcast, Keisha, now 42, shared: ‘I had this incident right before my GCSEs, where I was kidnapped.
‘So, because it was quite a traumatic experience, my parents were, like, “Yeah, so we’re going to do a different type of education”. So I kind of finished like my education, but I just couldn’t do my GCSEs.
‘I was basically taken after school by someone. I think I just sort of blocked it and then had to just get back into, you know, promotion of our first single.’
Keisha said one day she would share the details in a memoir, but shared that she was held captive for several hours.
‘It was a few hours,’ she continued. ‘So for a kid, you know, it’s a long time.’
The About You Now singer said she went through therapy to help process it and has remained ‘such an advocate’ ever since.
She, Mutya Buena, and Siobhán Donaghy went to return to school – but only Siobhán was allowed to return, according to Keisha.
‘They accepted her back,’ Keisha claimed of their school admissions. ‘When Mutya and I tried to get back, they were so rude.
(Picture: Ash Knotek/Shutterstock)
‘They were like, “Oh no, no, no, you’re not coming back. Like you guys thought you were going to be these pop stars. Let’s see what’s going to happen.” So they wouldn’t accept us back.’
Keisha plans to go into more detail about the kidnapping, as well as Sugababes’ infamous lineup changes, in her tell-all book.
The band shot to fame with their first single, Overload, before each woman was slowly swapped out for Heidi Range, Amelle Berrabah, and Jade Ewen.
In 2011, the Sugababes split as there were no original members left, with Jade joining in 2009 after Keisha’s exit.
The original trio reunited in 2012 under the name Mutya Keisha Siobhan and signed a £1,000,000 deal with Polydor Records, which resulted in just one single.
Almost a decade later, they reclaimed their original Sugababes name and began touring again as a trio, with huge performances at Glastonbury and Mighty Hoopla.
On the podcast, Keisha added: ‘Honestly, I feel like, and it sounds really cliche, but I do feel like it’s by God’s grace. I genuinely feel that way because the things that have happened to us behind the scenes that no one even knows, like being kidnapped, I feel like there were so many things that have happened that really, some of us shouldn’t have even survived and we’re standing today.’
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