Paloma Faith once hit a man over the head with a suitcase to stop him from assaulting her.

The 42-year-old singer was a budding performer doing small gigs and alleged that she had been trying to call her mother from a phone box when a man squashed himself into the small booth with her but she thought quickly and got herself out of the situation.

Writing in her new book ' MILF: Motherhood, Identity, Love and F******', she said: "One day, in my early twenties, I was coming back late at night from a cabaret job I was doing.

“I went into a phone box, very retro, to call my mother, who was always worrying about my safety, and a man kicked the door of the phone box in so I would be trapped and tried to get in it with me. He was gripping my chest and groin and telling me to shhh but luckily I had my wits about me, as well as a small wheelie suitcase. I picked it up and smashed him round the head with it and ran to a local 24/7 shop where I knew the staff, who helped me."

The 'New York' songstress also revealed that later on, she was almost subject to two more graphic situations and, for one of them, she is still not entirely sure what happened to her.

She wrote: "Later in life, I was twice in situations where I was date rape drugged – luckily they didn’t manage to follow through with it.

“On one occasion because the people I was with were looking out for me and the other . . . I still to this day am not sure what happened.

“I woke up naked in someone’s bed though. I don’t know what they did with my body. Dark times."