The Big Interview: Bo Bruce

Savernake Estate, boasting 4,500 acres of the only privately owned forest in the UK and a grand Grade I listed mansion, sounds like an idyllic place to grow up. What’s not to love about a childhood lived against the backdrop of stunning scenery and a historical family heritage which brings privileges and opportunities by the bucketload? Bo Bruce doesn’t quite see it that way. For her, life on that sprawling Wiltshire estate brings back anything but happy memories.

“All that was affluent and impressive was just superficial,” says the Marlborough College educated 28-year-old who ditched her official title – Lady Catherine Brudenell-Bruce – some years ago. “The same scenes that might happen on a side street in EastEnders were happening in our world too. We just had a different backdrop.”

When Bo was first exposed to the British public on the first series of The Voice last year she tried to distance herself from her family’s connections – her ancestors had led the Charge of the Light Brigade. It didn’t work. While producers didn’t delve too deeply, her past was too much of a good back story to ignore and Bo was braced for the inevitable criticism that someone so apparently well-connected shouldn’t need the support of a TV talent show to realise her dreams.

“It doesn’t matter where you come from, the most terrible things happen to anyone and everyone. People are beginning to get that, but yeah, there were definitely people who said, ‘how can anything bad happen to you when the backdrop to your childhood was so impressive?’”

Born in 1984 to the Earl of Cardigan David Brudenell-Bruce and Rosamond Winkley, Bo was brought up on the rolling Wiltshire estate, but her childhood crumbled much like the 19th-century lodge where her father now lives.

Last year she took out a restraining order against him and when the issue is raised, her voice drops to barely more than a whisper. “I’m not officially allowed to utter a word about my dad,” she says. “I just can’t.”

While Bo has stayed quiet on the matter her father has given several interviews about his daughter, although he has never explained what led to the breakdown of their relationship. However, his troubles with his children – Bo’s brother Thomas James Brudenell-Bruce, Viscount Savernake – is also estranged from his father, isn’t the only battle he is facing at the moment. The Earl is currently engaged in a long running dispute with the trustees of the estate and while he has never been convicted, he has been taken to court twice charged with criminal damage, theft and assault.

For Bo music has always been an escape. Before appearing on The Voice, she was a finalist in the Orange Unsigned competition in 2009. “We were shoved on tour and while there were cameras, it was all very off the cuff. It was very laid back. The Voice was much more studio based and we had to give lots of interviews which took up a lot of your time.”

After the Orange Unsigned competition, Bo was offered record deals but decided to concentrate on her songwriting, releasing an independent EP Search the Night in 2010. As an artist she was already establishing herself and admits she did have reservations about The Voice. Immediately after filming the blind auditions she sat down with a producer to work out whether signing up to the BBC show was the right one.

“I had a vision already and I wanted to make sure they were aware of that. However, while I had had management and a publishing deal, what I didn’t have exposure. That’s why I was keen to do it. I was concerned, but they assured me that they wouldn’t try to divert me off the path I was already on and they kept their word. I did The Voice because I saw how much control I could have but there is no way you could do that on other shows.”

Although Bo came second, not winning isn’t something that she regrets “some very strange things happened to me circumstantially that just wouldn’t have happened had I had to live the life of the winner of that show.”

She’s referring to the chance meeting with Coldplay’s agent at one of their gigs after she mistook him for a bouncer and he expressed an interest in working with her. That wasn’t the only fateful encounter that night “the real deal about that night was meeting Jonny Quinn and Gary Lightbody from Snow Patrol because they took me on-board and started writing with me and signed me to their publishing company and became mentors and friends. That saffected everything and it was purely because of having a beer watching Coldplay.”

As Bo’s musical career was taking the leaps she had hoped for, her personal life was dealt a shattering blow when her mother passed away from pancreatic cancer shortly after the show ended. She credits the people she worked with on her album as helping her cope with the dichotomy of the last 12 months, particularly Henry Binns of Zero 7 who collaborated on the album and Quinn and Jonny McDaid from Snow Patrol.

“I found making the record was made a lot easier by the people I surrounded myself with, the people I worked with became dear friends. I had to go through two processes; I had to record an album, but I also had to deal with all the emotions that I was going through. If all those people had just been work colleagues it wouldn’t have worked for me. They had to become friends and family.”

Perhaps slightly tellingly the first single off the album is entitled Save Me; the video shows Bo balancing on a rock in a lake, her vulnerability palpable. The ending suggests her saviour doesn’t come in the shape of the expected male companion but herself.

“I’m alright, my feet keep walking but I am aware that there is a huge void that I am still trying to fill. Perhaps I am filling that with my career.”

Although clearly still struggling with the events of the past year she doesn’t give the impression of someone feeling sorry for herself. Instead she determined to control her own destiny.

As the show that propelled her into the public sphere resumed for a second season, Bo was preparing to set out on her own tour. However, she admits that those weekly performances in front of both a live audience and millions of viewers at home, hasn’t quashed her nerves about performing. “I’m always terrified because I don’t like talking to lots of people at once so I don’t really know why I have chosen this career. Just before going on stage is a weird time for me, particularly on The Voice. I used to have these very strange out of body experiences. I felt like I was taking LSD but I wasn’t. The point is I just disassociate under pressure, which I have been doing since I was a kid actually. One minute I’m there, the next I’m being a bit loopy because I’m so stressed. I am working on it.”

Having experienced a year that swung between trauma and the musical recognition she has been courting for years, Bo isn’t putting too much thought into where her life is headed. All she hopes is that her album is “received well by the people who I want to receive it” and to continue to draw from what she has already learnt about herself.

“I’m stronger than I figured,” she says. “Things have happened that I didn’t think I would live beyond and I am still breathing and walking and eating and sleeping and functioning, and that has surprised me.”

In fact Bo has done more than simply just function, she has poured her emotions into her new album and carried on fighting to distance herself from the demons of the past, whether she will be able to one day tell her story in its entirety remains a question for the future.

In the meantime Bo is trying to live for the moment.

“I spend a lot of time aching about my past or freaking out about the future,” she says. “I often miss what’s actually going on in my current state.”

Bo Bruce plays the Brudenell Social Club, Leeds on June 19.