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Ellie Goulding has praised her mother for working so hard to make her childhood Christmases special. The Anything Could Happen singer and her three siblings were raised in Hereford, England, by their mother Tracey, who split from Ellie’s father when she was five, and she remembers how much effort her mum would put into the special day for the family, even though they had financial problems.

Ellie recalled “We never had any money so it was quite stressful. My mum never wanted us to go without, so she’d start buying things for us early in the year. I was quite a weird kid because I didn’t like getting presents. I don’t know why. I always went for books all the time.”

The 25-year-old pop star also revealed she has overcome the panic attacks she suffered when she was first thrown into the spotlight in 2009. Ellie would get so scared and nervous when she first became famous she used to think she was having a heart attack but she now feels lucky to have beaten her problems without resorting to medication. In an interview with the Daily Mirror newspaper, she said “I feel I’ve been through that and now I’m over it. I can’t believe I got myself into that situation of panic. At the time it was normal for me to walk into a room, sit next to [someone] and think, ‘I can’t do this.’ At the time I couldn’t even leave my apartment. Now if panic hits, you have to sort of be friends with your body. It’s like your body will actually work against you.”