Sugababes was tough.. I had one day off in a year

PERFORMING as a child at weddings and birthdays, Mutya Buena and her dad Roberto would be rewarded at the end of the night with a big glass filled with coins and notes from guests as a thank you payment.

- BY MARK JEFFERIES

Six years later she would begin her life in the Sugababes and become part of one of Britain's biggest girl bands, buying her parents a house with the proceeds of her first contract.

But the journey over the next few decades would bring huge highs and lows for Mutya, which she is only now coming to terms with.

In her new book Real Girl, the 40-year-old said: "Some of the adults we dealt with cared more about our worth than our well-being. As long as we were making money for them, they couldn't give two s***s about what was going on in our heads or hearts as children."

As a girl, Mutya sang at home and at parties for the London Filipino community, before appearing on Michael Barrymore's My Kind of People aged nine singing The Greatest Love of All.

Fast forward a few years and Mutya met Keisha Buchanan at primary school.