Alesha Dixon’s dad admits he slapped his daughter in row over her boyfriend MC Harvey - but says he’s not the ‘bad dad’ she claims he is

Alesha Dixon’s father has said he’s not the ‘bad dad’ she claims he is, despite admitting he once slapped her in the face over a row with her then Boyfriend MC Harvey.

Talking to the Sun on Sunday, Melvin Dixon describes seeing his estranged daughter on TV as ‘torture’. He admits to having a rocky relationship with his 40-year-old daughter, but says he was on the scene when she was a child, despite her claiming he was an absent father.

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Talking about the slapping incident, 66-year-old Dixon said: “I didn’t like Harvey - he was disrespectful to me and kept speaking in gang slang to me, calling me ‘blud’.

“It is disrespectful to speak to me like that, I am older than him. So we had an argument.

“I said to him, ‘Are you going to get your gang to shoot me?’

“Alesha shouted at me, ‘I am not f***ing scared of you’. I said, ‘I didn’t raise you to be scared of me’. And then, yes, I did slap her.

“It was in her face. I said sorry and she said it was OK. We went outside and we were fine. But she didn’t come back after that. The next year was the wedding and I didn’t get invited.”

He rekindled his relationship with his daughter after she split from Harvey when he began an affair with X Factor singer Javine Hylton. The relationship soured again after she became a household name by winning Strictly Come Dancing and going on to judge the competition before quitting to take up her current role on Britain’s Got Talent.

Dixon said: “It has been awful. It is torture seeing her on TV knowing she’s not part of my life any more.

“I am pleased about her success. But she doesn’t speak to anyone on my side, including my brothers.

“Perhaps she feels more comfortable with showbiz people, but I worry she has forgotten where she came from.

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“If I just got one phone call from her, we could move forward.”

Alesha, was four when her parents split, and has previously called her family ‘dysfunctional’.

In one interview, she said: “I didn’t have much contact with my dad at all when I was little.”

But her father says this isn’t the case. He said: “I was five minutes away, Alesha was still part of my family. She spent weekends with me and I saw her during the week.

“When I read the things she says about me, I can’t believe it is my little girl. I took her to all her dance classes, we went on holidays to Southend and Great Yarmouth - and to Jamaica.”

Alesha Dixon has a six-year-old daughter with husband Azuka Ononye. The pair are now expecting their second child. The pregnancy was announced on live on telly by Britain’s Got Talent hosts Ant and Dec.