Stacey Solomon has claimed that she was once propositioned by a record producer who told her that sleeping with him would help her get ahead in the music business – and that her career suffered when she refused to do so.

The 28 year old singer and TV presenter, who came third on the 2009 edition of ‘The X Factor’, appeared on ITV’s chat show ‘Loose Women’ on Wednesday afternoon (January 31st), where she revealed that the unnamed man told her, years ago, that her singing career would be helped if she were to spend “alone time” with him.

“I was meeting someone [a producer] really big who could help me distribute [the record in another country] and would get on board and make a huge difference,” Solomon told the panel.

Stacey SolomonStacey Solomon has detailed a sexual advance made by a record producer

When she realised what the producer meant, she turned him down and pulled out of a scheduled recording session with him.

“That person was asking if I wanted some alone time with him at dinner, and [saying] we should get to know each other more,” she continued. “At first I was sort of ‘haha’ and laughed it off, but then I realised it was a real invitation, ‘If you come with me, maybe I can help you’.”

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She added: “At that point I was like, “OK, I’m going to go home and definitely not further my career in this’.”

Solomon had started work on her debut album Shy in the summer of 2011, but the results didn’t see the light of day until almost four years later in 2015. This proved to be a major setback in her career, with the album failing to penetrate the UK Top 40, and she's never recorded a follow-up.

“It just seems to be happening everywhere,” she concluded. “It’s disheartening more than anything because you look and think I definitely had the credentials to do that just as well as the other person, so there’s no reason I shouldn’t have got the job, but it is disheartening. Ultimately those people in power shouldn't be putting women in that position in the first place. That is where the fault lies.”

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