Dappy: 'I Would Have Died Or Ended Up In Jail Without N-dubz'

The star, real name Dino Contostavlos, endured a troubled childhood and has a criminal record after he was convicted of spitting in a woman's face during a drunken brawl in 2008.

Contostavlos vowed to turn his life around after his dad caught him as a teenager with drugs and weapons - and warned him he would be jailed if he continued to spiral out of control.

The star's late father encouraged his son to play music instead of getting himself into trouble before he passed away in 2007 - and Dappy credits music with saving him from a life of crime.

He says, "If I weren't in N-Dubz, I'd say I'd be either dead or in jail. One of the two if I never did music. Straight up dead or in jail.

"When I was a teenager I was getting up to all sorts to make money. Then I had a scare. I realised I could go to prison for years of my life. It was my dad who caught me - and it was him who pushed us all to take the better turn... He would come into my bedroom and find me with serious drugs or maybe some sort of weapon and shout at me. I was 16.

"He said, 'What are you doing with this in your hand? You don't need that. You are going to go down, you are going to go down... Mainly, the change to our attitude came because I had love from my mum Zoi and my dad, and that's what made me drag myself up out of being a little s**t - out on the streets doing badness.

"I wanted to make them proud and I didn't want to make my mum cry any more. She used to weep and say: 'You're not like this, I didn't raise you to be this person.'"