HAVING mingled with royals for years — amid rumours she dated Prince Harry — it would be easy to assume that Ellie Goulding was born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
The Sun on Sunday yesterday revealed the 36-year-old pop star is being supported through her marriage split from Eton-educated art dealer Caspar Jopling, 31, by her close friend Zac Goldsmith, 48, a Tory peer and multi-millionaire.
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Yet mum-of-one Ellie, who has four No1 albums and is worth an estimated £23million, has not always moved in such affluent circles.
She was brought up by single mother Tracey on a council estate in Lyonshall, Herefordshire, sharing a bedroom with her two sisters.
Determined to make a success of her life, and driven by a passion for music, ambitious Ellie worked hard to get to the top, even becoming the first in her family to go to university.
It was in her final year of studies that she got her big break, signing with Polydor Records after she was spotted at an open mic night.
She has since won three Brit Awards, including Best Female Solo Artist in 2011.
That same year she performed at the royal wedding of the now Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Kate.
Down-to-earth Ellie admitted she was “s****ing her pants” before- hand — but it proved a pivotal moment personally and professionally.
Ellie was just five when her father Arthur walked out on her and her three siblings — Isabel, now 37, Alex, 32, and Jordan, 31 — for reasons still unknown to her.
I worked really hard
He came from a family of undertakers, and Ellie says he was “obsessed with murder”, even once bringing home a book crammed with vivid pictures of famous killings, which she skimmed through before her mum found out and burned it.
At first, Ellie saw her dad once every other weekend, then once a month, until they became completely estranged by the time she was 19.
He now lives in Hereford, some miles from her family home, with his second wife Sharlene, and was reunited with Ellie for the first time in 2016 at the christening of her older sister Isabel’s daughter.
While Ellie was growing up, Tracey, a music fan who worked for record companies, did shifts in a supermarket to make ends meet.
Ellie has told how money was tight.
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A typical dinner would be beans and chips, the family’s furniture consisted of “moth-eaten and flea-ridden” hand-me-downs from her nana and holidays were scarce, with the occasional caravan break in Tenby, south west Wales.
“I didn’t have the best childhood . . . we grew up in the smallest house,” Ellie said.
“Me and my younger sister Jordan had bunk beds and Isabel was on the other side of the room.”
She has also told of bailiffs taking away the family TV due to unpaid bills.
Tracey got married again, to a man Ellie described as a lorry driver with tattoos that included a bulldog smoking a spliff and a snake with a dagger through it.
The pair were together for 15 years — but the singer was not close to her stepdad.
She said: “He wasn’t strict and he wasn’t a drunk, he just wasn’t very intelligent.
“He wasn’t the type to suggest a book to read or film to watch.
“He was just a difficult person to live with.
“Even as a youngster, I knew I’d be a different adult to him.”
Ellie was a grafter from a young age.
She got a job sweeping floors at a local hairdressing salon aged 12 and later cleaned the toilets at a pub.
And she taught herself to play guitar and clarinet aged 14.
By 15 she was writing her own music.
Ellie even made it her mission to ditch her West Country accent by studying period dramas — and BBC newsreader Nicholas Witchell.
She said: “I became fixated on speaking well.
“I felt like people knew I was from a council house, and that I was poor, because of the way I spoke.”
Ellie went to her local comprehensive school, Lady Hawkins’, and stayed on the straight and narrow while some pals dabbled with booze and drugs.
“I understood that I had a lot of friends who didn’t live in the same situation as me,” she said.
“I knew my only way out of this was through education.
“I worked really hard in school.
“I don’t think I was intelligent but I feel I worked so hard I kind of made myself.
“I wasn’t a happy child.
“I felt different to everyone else.
“I’d separate everything.
“I’d have friends from my council estate and then these middle-class friends from school, who I’d never let come back to my house.”
Ellie got As in A-level English, politics and drama, yet failed music.
She put it down to wanting to sing and play guitar rather than study.
At 18 she met and moved in with sound engineer Matt, then 32, who urged her to apply to the University of Kent for a place on their drama and theatre studies course.
Becoming a student was the first time she had ever had her own bedroom.
During a talent show in her third year, Ellie met Jamie Lillywhite, the son of music producer Steve Lillywhite and the late singer Kirsty MacColl, famous for the Pogues’ Christmas hit Fairytale Of New York.
Steve became her manager and helped Ellie secure her first record deal with Polydor, which saw her quit uni before graduating.
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She has since been awarded an honorary Doctor of Arts degree.
Steve introduced her to the producer Starsmith, who became her chief collaborator and primary producer of her debut studio album Lights, which went straight to the top of the album charts the following year.
Ellie dedicated Lights to first love “Matthew”, who “found and saved me”.
She later admitted their romance didn’t work out as he became too much of a “father figure”.
In 2010 her cover of Sir Elton John’s Your Song, recorded for the John Lewis Christmas advert, caught the attention of the royals.
She met Prince William when he watched her at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend that year.
Blown away by her “brilliant” set, he invited her to perform the track at Buckingham Palace as he celebrated marrying Kate on April 29, 2011.
“I did their first dance and talk about scary,” she said. “I was so nervous my hands were shaking.”
At the royal bash she met Prince Harry, and the pair are rumoured to have dated — having been spotted at the Audi Polo challenge together in May 2014.
Sources at the time said they were “all over each other at the after-party” and “only had eyes for each other”.
Ellie’s high-profile exes also include Radio 1 host Greg James, McFly star Dougie Poynter and US music producer Skrillex.
And she is firm friends with Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, in part thanks to her charity work helping the homeless.
In 2019 Eugenie thanked Ellie for her charity efforts in a post featuring a black and white photo of them together.
The trio have also been snapped together watching US basketball team the New York Knicks, partying at London’s Chiltern Firehouse and on trips abroad with pals including model Karlie Kloss.
Ellie met husband Caspar, grandson of ex-Tory MP Michael Jopling, in 2017 through mutual friends, including Beatrice and Eugenie.
They married two years later after a 12 month engagement, with a lavish reception at Yorkshire’s Castle Howard attended by guests including royal friends, Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom.
The couple welcomed son Arthur in 2021 but are now said to be spending time apart after cracks showed in their marriage.
The singer is believed to be splitting her time between their pads in West London and Oxford, but remain close as they co-parent their son.
Ellie’s track record suggests she will get through this — and come back even stronger.
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