I'm A Celebrity fans are only just realising that Tulisa Contostavlos takes after her famous father.
The N-Dubz singer, 36, has music in her blood as her dad is Steve Contostavlos, who shot to fame in the seventies with his blues band Mungo Jerry. Better known by his alias Plato, he played the keyboard while his brother Byron - who was Tulisa's uncle and father of her cousin and fellow N-Dubz star Dappy - played bass guitar in the group.
They had a huge Number 1 hit with the song "In The Summertime," released in 1970. Tulisa, a budding musician, no doubt turned to her dad for guidance when starting out in the hip-hop trio, which she joined at age 11.
And it is not the only time the I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! campmate has leaned on her dad, 65, for support. She endured a tough childhood growing up in Camden, North London, where she was relentlessly bullied at school over her mum's mental health.
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Planet Photos)Her mum, Ann, suffered from schizophrenia, which saw her in and out of hospital as she slipped into terrifying psychotic episodes, leaving her unable to look after herself, let alone her daughter. Children in her class began to tease Tulisa about her mother's condition, leaving her to sob for days over their taunts.
Plato revealed to the Sunday Mirror that he taught her to stick up for herself. "My daughter was horribly bullied. It was awful. Children would scream, 'Your mum's a loony'," he said in 2012. "Tulisa was about five years old when it first started. She would come home crying all the time.
"In the end I had to tell her, 'I can’t go and sort this problem out for you. This is the kind of thing you are going to face in life and you have to stand up for yourself'.
"Then one day when she was about seven, after I had trained her for about six months, she came back from school and said, ‘Dad I knocked one of them out. You were right Dad, I did it'. It had to be done, the misery that child went through at school was unbelievable. Every time she went in she was terrified."
He believes it was the start of her developing a tough exterior, especially after having to fend for herself as Plato and Ann split when she was just nine. The bullying didn't stop completely, however, so Plato decided to move her to a new school.
He added: "She went through a lot, that's why she has become who she is, it made her the success she is. It's incredible that she has achieved what she has considering everything. Her childhood was unbelievably tough."
Tulisa's ordeal didn't end there as she too suffered with her mental health as she grew older, admitting she became depressed as she struggled to navigate her teens with an ill mother. Talking about his ex-wife Ann's condition, which she developed at a young age, Plato explained: "I didn't know about it, but after Tulisa was born I got the shock of my life.
"She would be such a lovely person but then it would kick in. It was horrible, really crazy stuff. It was so painful for Tulisa and I to see mothers walking happily down the street with their children without a care in the world.
"But I remember when she was 13, Tulisa came to me and said, 'I understand now, Dad'. She had grown up and she could see with her own eyes what was going on. When she was a little girl, she just didn't understand, and it badly affected her."
Opening up about the strain it had on her, Tulisa said in 2011: "I'm a strong girl but I still suffered with depression."
*I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! continues tonight from 9pm on ITV1
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