Tulisa on her post-drugs trial attitude: “It’s hard not to sound like a bitch”

Tulisa Contostavlos is terrified her new confident attitude after bouncing back from her drugs trial hell makes her seem like “a bitch”.

The singer found herself caught in a newspaper sting and stood up in court after she was accused of arranging a cocaine deal for an undercover reporter.

Her trial collapsed in July after it was suspected one of the key witnesses had lied under oath, meaning she was never found guilty of the allegation.

The former X Factor judge made a return to the show this year to assist panelist Louis Walsh at the judges’ houses stage, but thinks people may take her new outlook the wrong way.

She told Attitude: “It’s hard to explain how I’ve changed without making it sound like I was a bad person before – or a bitch – but I just feel like I… I wasn’t a bad person, I just had a lot more to learn, and I could have been better.

“The year that I’ve had has brought out the best in me, if that makes sense. I do feel like I’ve put so many different areas of my life to the test: the way I think about things, the way that I approach things; becoming less judgmental and more understanding.”

This summer, the former N-Dubz star spoke of her suicide attempt when the stress of her trial got too much, but says her previous life experiences helped her cope with her troubles.

She added: “I think deep down I’ve always kept the hope. When people were like, ‘What do you think is going to happen?’, I’d be like, ‘My heart tells me I’m going to be better than ever but my head tells me to prepare for the worst.’

“So it is a bit of a battle. I wanted to believe, but at the same time you don’t want to be cocky, because it’s a life lesson. You have to feel like it’s all going to be over, so when you ride it out on a high you appreciate it even more.

“There were moments when I was like, ‘I don’t see how I’m going to come back from this. I can’t see it happening’, but then I’d be like, ‘No, I’ve gone through way too much crap for it to end like this.’”

GALLERY: Tulisa's face over the years