Cheryl Cole: How dumping my abusive boyfriend as a teenager gave me the strength to succeed in life
Last updated at 7:15 PM on 09th January 2009
She's the nation's sweetheart and every detail of her life is pored over by her adoring fans. But in an exclusive interview, she tells ANNABEL RIVKIN about her gritty upbringing and how it filled her with the determination that has helped her become the biggest name in showbiz. Nicola Roberts describes how she's learned to cope with her pale complexion and Nadine Coyle spills the beans on her break-up with Jesse Metcalfe, while Kimberley Walsh talks about having children with her long-time boyfriend and party girl Sarah Harding explains why she's looking forward to decamping to the country and buying an Aga...
From scrapper in a tracksuit to nation's sweetheart: Cheryl Cole has charmed the public since her husband Ashley Cole's infidelity
Cheryl Cole is the nation's sweetheart and she's finding it all a bit overwhelming. 'It's scary,' she says. She's used to attention but not of the adoring kind. Cheryl had the highest profile of the five girls long before she accepted the job of judging the last series of The X Factor.
In 2003, before Girls Aloud's first single, 'Sound of the Underground' had vacated the No 1 spot, Cheryl had got herself involved in a fracas with a Guildford nightclub loo attendant over whether or not the lollipops on display were complementary. She was charged with racially aggravated assault and, although cleared of the racist charge, was found guilty of assault, fined and given 120 hours of community service.
She has been involved in a number of 'celebrity feuds', most notably with Charlotte Church and Lily Allen, and she married the footballer Ashley Cole in 2006.
The ceremony and party ran over 40 pages in OK! magazine for a reported fee of £1 million, which must have made the allegations of his infidelity earlier this year all the more humiliating.
A 22-year-old hairdresser sold her story, claiming to have had sex with a rampagingly drunk Ashley. Cheryl removed her wedding ring, lost two stone, looked stoic a lot, replaced her wedding ring and issued a statement saying that she would 'not let this woman destroy our marriage'.
Cheryl Cole arrives at the ES photo shoot looking tired but freshly scrubbed, and orders a full English breakfast that she works her way through while her hair is being done. On her wedding finger floats a vast yellow diamond that looks too heavy for those delicate little paws.
It was an anniversary present. She is 5ft 3in and slender rather than stress-skinny as she was over the silent summer months when, it seems, she was repairing her marriage. I ask her if married life is going well and she nods but bats away the question. She seems fed-up, either with me for raising the subject or with Ashley for obvious reasons. Or both.
In days gone by, the pages of Cheryl's interviews would turn blue because her language was so fruity, but now that she is a primetime favourite, she does not swear. Neither does she talk about her marriage. 'I always thought that if you are open and honest then that's best, but it came back to bite us on the arse,' she says flatly. 'That's it now. My private life is going to remain that way.'
Cheryl credits her role on the X Factor - and her relationship with Simon Cowell, right, as helping her overcome - the infidelity of her husband, footballer Ashley Cole earlier this year
It's strange because her natural tendency is to be completely open, so this new, guarded Cheryl is a slightly peculiar prospect. She's funny and chirpy and strong, and then she seems to remember herself and starts gazing quietly into her cup of tea. It's as though she's trained herself.
She and Ashley met at Princess Park Manor, a residential complex in North London where Cheryl shared a flat with Nicola, where Ashley had a bachelor pad and where Kimberley still lives. The Coles now live in a big house in Oxshott in Surrey. I ask her if Ashley likes her dressed up and glitzy or pared down and natural.
'I don't care,' she says wearily. I don't know if she's defiant or tired; one exacerbated by the other I suspect. 'We are always dressed up,' she sighs. 'Most people only put on make-up on a Friday night, but it's the opposite for us, so I just like to sit around the house with no make-up on and me hair tied up and some kind of face mask on, picking me nose.'
She was brought up in a council house in Heaton, a humble part of Newcastle. 'I love it when I go back there,' she says. 'I wind down the windows because there's a certain smell and it's the only place in the world that gives me that special feeling.'
She is the youngest of five. The first three are from her mother's first marriage and she and her younger brother Gary are from her mother's marriage to her father, who left when she was 11. 'Me oldest brother, Joe, has got five kids, which is amazing, and he works at Nissan,' she says.
Girls Aloud: From left to right Cheryl Cole, Sarah Harding, Kimberley Walsh, Nicola Roberts and Nadine Coyle
'Me sister Gillian has just had her second baby. Andrew is the next one, and me younger brother Gary has just left university and is the most adorable human being on this planet.' Andrew doesn't work and has appeared in court more than 50 times, mostly on charges of theft and vandalism. Cheryl is very close to Gillian, a single mother, 'but we have struggled a bit recently because the press have started on my family.
'They took pictures of her house and compared it to mine, but if you compare my house to most people's there is going to be a difference because I live a very fortunate lifestyle.'
The five girls competed in and won 2002's dimly remembered Popstars: The Rivals, so they are all competent, but if Nadine is the singer of the group then Cheryl is probably the dancer. 'I'm no Mariah Carey,' she says of her singing. 'I'm realistic about my ability.'
She went to a little '50p-a-go' dance school above the local supermarket and briefly attended a Royal Ballet School summer school but didn't like it. She won a Boots' bonny baby competition and appeared in a British Gas advert. School bored her and she left before taking GCSEs. She just wanted to perform. 'It was never, ever about being famous,' she says. 'I hear kids saying they want to be famous and I think, "You really don't." '
After school, she waitressed locally and, between 16 and 18, fell apart at the hands of a bad boyfriend. 'It was abusive and he was taking drugs and I wasn't very well,' she says. 'I was depressed and poorly for two years; really poorly mentally. I would wake up in the middle of the night and he'd be gone and every time you got a phone call you didn't know where he was going to be. I had to end it for my health. It was like a weird wave of strength.'
No wonder she got so thin and sad after the hairdresser's kiss-and-tell. It must have pushed all sorts of old buttons. I think she might be a bad picker.
It's been reported than Simon Cowell has offered her a 100 per cent pay rise to judge the next series of The X Factor. Her act, Alexandra Burke, whom she describes as 'an English Beyoncé', won the last series. Cheryl found the whole experience enormously rewarding, so much so that she's considering a career in management when she retires from performing. 'I didn't think it through when I was offered it,' she admits. 'I just thought I'd sit on the panel and have a laugh at the nut jobs. Then it escalated.'
The X Factor redressed the balance for Cheryl. She went from scrapping, tracksuit-wearing terror to wronged wife to nation's sweetheart. 'I had got myself into such a deep hole of badness - a lot of negative stuff,' she says. 'Till The X Factor there was this thing that I was the gobby bitch of the band. Yes, I'm opinionated, but I wasn't this person I used to read about. All these years I've guarded myself against criticism.' But for now at least, Cheryl Cole can do no wrong.
NICOLA ROBERTS
Nicola Roberts is a serious little thing. Naturally slender with bright white skin and copper-coloured hair, she is the baby of the band and was only 16 when it all began. Within months she had left school, become instantly famous, as only reality contestants can, and her parents split up.
So she was isolated, home was no longer home as she knew it, and people started on at her for being the only non-fanciable member of the band by virtue of being pale and red-haired. 'It didn't send me mad but I turned into a very deep thinker,' she says in her heavy Liverpool accent.
Runcorn redhead: Nicola Roberts in a £1,900 Collette Dinnigan dress (020 7589 8897)
'I had to rationalise what was happening and it made me a solid person because I was having a bit of a negative time, but at the other end of the spectrum my career was flying. I think it kept me level-headed. At that age it's hard to keep hold of your own mind but I had to keep hold with both hands. I also learned about people. I learned that people can be arseholes.'
Nicola, 23, is a plain-speaking Scouser. She once described Gordon Brown as 'a little toad who talks shite', and on the news that, after years of Chris Martin singing the group's praises, Girls Aloud have been invited to support Coldplay at Wembley, she says, 'He has actually pulled his finger out, that's what he's done. All talk, no action and he's finally sorted it out.'
She had just left school when they saw the advert for Popstars: The Rivals and her mother rang up and asked for an application form. When she made the band her mother said, 'You don't have to do this, you know. You are very young,' and Nicola was outraged. 'It pissed me off a bit,' she says now. 'I was like, "Are you jokin'? This is smacking me right in the face and you're asking me that?"' But looking back, I totally understand. It was her job to say that.'
Nicola moved into a flat with Cheryl in Princess Park Manor near Southgate, and the older girl (by two years) remains her protector. 'I think I'll always be a little sister to Cheryl,' she says. 'And if I need advice, it's Cheryl. We are very similar. I will go to Kimberley for advice but she's not a very deep thinker, she's more practical. For someone to help me they have to think like me, and Cheryl does.'
Nicola is living at the Mayfair Hotel at the moment. 'I'm a bit in limbo,' she says. She went out with her school boyfriend, Carl Egerton, from the age of 16 until the end of 2006. In early 2007 she met entrepreneur Carl Davis and they moved to a house she bought in Kent. They split up in May. 'Basically there is construction going on at the house so I moved to a hotel and now I don't want to go back,' she says. 'It's too far away from town. I'm 23 years old; why am I living all the way out in Kent on me own? What am I doing?' She is thinking that she will let her house and buy a place in London, possibly in Wapping because she loves the river.
She has a new boyfriend, Charlie Fennell, also 23, who sells boats in Dubai. 'After it ended with Carl, I felt I couldn't be arsed with this dating bullshit. It was too much hard work and it was stressing me out.' So she had a single summer, lounged around St Tropez for a few weeks and then met Charlie. 'Then I was like, this is not so hard, actually.'
She expects to spend most of this month in Dubai but she won't be sunbathing because she has come to terms with her colouring at last. 'I struggled with the idea of being this pale and it was a major issue for me, but your taste changes, doesn't it?' she says. She stopped plastering on the fake tan, swapped trashy magazines for fashion magazines and 'became more open-minded and worldly'.
The outcome of all this was her own make-up line for pale-skinned women, called Dainty Doll, which is sold through asos.com and the cosmetics company Jelly Pong Pong. She hopes to get it into major stores next year. There was an element of self-acceptance involved in this project and she has found it both liberating and exhilarating.
Nicola is a rather wry young woman who seems just to be starting to relax. Perhaps it is merely that she's growing up, something that most of us get to do in comfortable obscurity. 'I'm happy,' she says in her direct way. 'I feel more settled than I have ever felt, even though I don't want to live in my house. I feel content.'
NADINE COYLE
Nadine Coyle has something a little separate about her. While the other four sit in one room drinking tea and nibbling Pret sandwiches, Nadine, the voice and the legs of the band, sits on a sofa in the hotel lobby with her little sister Rachael. This could be because she wants to spend time with her sister without overcrowding the changing room, or it could be because she has become slightly disenfranchised from the other girls. She has, after all, moved to Los Angeles.
Nadine, 23, with her endless limbs and sweet Irish singing voice, was born and brought up in divided Derry. 'There were certain places you didn't go on certain dates,' she says in the strongest Irish lilt I have ever heard. 'I just grew up thinking that's how it was for everyone. I knew people who were killed and I knew there were bomb scares but you just lived your life.'
When Irish eyes are smiling: Nadine Coyle in a Sea New York at Joseph dress, £385 (020 7243 9920)
Nadine is the middle of three girls. Her father used to run car dealerships and her mother is a powerful Catholic housewife who was convinced, when Nadine started with the band aged 17, that her daughter would be 'abused; that there would be sharks; that people would force cocaine on me. That was her idea of showbiz.'
By the time she got into the band, Nadine had already been a winner on the Irish equivalent of Popstars, and had been selected to be part of the band Six. She was disqualified when the producers realised she was 16 and the rules stipulated that contestants had to be 18.
During the heats of Popstars: The Rivals, Nadine struggled with the dancing. Her legs are astounding but her arms are long, too, and even her fingers seem to go on forever. At 17, she just didn't know what to do with all this length and felt awkward even trying. 'It took me a long time because I thought I looked ridiculous and dancing should make you look graceful. I can see the point now but I still don't think ladies should show their armpits.'Nadine is marvellously genteel while managing to be simultaneously kittenish. This won her the attention of Desperate Housewives heart-throb Jesse Metcalfe (the show's male pin-up who played Eva Longoria's teenage lover), who she met in a bar in Sydney and who she went out with for 18 months until early last year when his drug problems and womanising became too much.
'I just thought, "I don't need this in my life,''' she says. 'I don't need to be on the front page talking about troubled this or troubled that. It all became a bit too Hollywood.'
For six months she has been going out with New York Giants American football hero Jason Bell. 'He's a very nice man,' she says, 'and I love a pretty boy. He's very stable and very smart. He went to Harvard and now that he's going into retirement from football he's going to be a financial advisor. I'm so impressed.'
Nadine herself has got a bit of a reputation for being financially astute because she has invested so heavily. She has a house in Barnet, Herts; a couple of rentals in Ireland, an apartment in LA, a house in Orange County (bought with her family), a bar in Florida called O'Malley's and another called Nadine's Irish Mist. 'I'm a bit dangerous with money,' she says. 'If I have it, I'll spend it. A few times in recent years, just through buying so much stuff as investments and dropping big sums here and there, I have left myself without enough money to buy a packet of chewing gum.'
Starting with her mother, 'the one with the power', Nadine persuaded both parents, her sisters and brother-in-law and nephews to move to California and went halves with them on a huge house in a gated community where her mother can bustle about and her nieces and nephews can play on the beach.
Nadine fell in love with LA four years ago when she went there for work. 'It was so tropical and yet Western,' she sighs in wonder. The rest of the clan moved there two years ago. Everyone is very happy, but it leaves Nadine with a hell of a commute to work in England. She is keen never to inflict her jet lag on the other girls.
While Sarah describes herself as 'hard work', Kimberley describes herself as 'the organiser', Cheryl describes herself as 'the mother', and Nicola describes herself as 'the baby', Nadine says that she is 'the singer', which seems to be coming at the group from a less emotional and more professional standpoint.
But then Nadine has the most stable family life so maybe she just needs the other girls less. 'I do most of the singing,' she says, 'always have done.' She would tend to go into the studio with the producer before the rest of the band and sing the demos to see which ones worked best. 'I can work at a quicker pace and just get stuff down.'
Nadine, for all her floaty Irish charm, is a lot savvier than she seems. She is perhaps the only one who might be a solo artist waiting to blossom. Trouble is, I think the others know it, too.
KIMBERLEY WALSH
Kimberley Walsh has the throatiest, smokiest Bradford-tinged speaking voice, which contrasts sharply with her honeyed, full-lipped looks. She is the organiser in the band. 'I'm the business one,' she says. 'I do all the accounts. I like to know the budget for everything and I sign everything off and they are all grateful because they are useless and they know they are.'
For the first couple of years of the band's life, when Louis Walsh was meant to manage them but didn't, Kimberley juggled the diary as well as the numbers and the girls would call her to find out where they were meant to be. 'Maybe it's my upbringing, but I would always rather know what is going on.'
She is one of those people who is good with money precisely because she lived through early financial crisis. 'It was quite tough because my dad's business went bankrupt when I was about five and everything changed. We begged, borrowed and stole to stay in the house but there were a lot of arguments and I could see the strain it put on my parents.'
The organiser: Kimberley Walsh wears a Zac Posen dress, £1,475, available at Harvey Nichols (020 7235 5000)
Kimberley, 27, is the second of four children, and her parents divorced soon after the youngest, now 21, was born. 'Not very nice,' she says, 'but we kind of got it. We knew it was better that they weren't together and at each other's throats all the time.'
Her mother is a music teacher and the children grew up around a piano. 'We were a bit like the von Trapps,' she says. 'When things aren't so rosy, you find ways to brighten them up and singing was our way. I mean, to go to McDonald's was a massive treat for us.'
She was about to embark on her third year studying English and media at Leeds University when she got into the band, and she never completed her degree. She feels that, at 20, she was better equipped than some of the younger girls to deal with the shock of the situation. 'I was a bit hardened to it and a little bit more comfortable with myself but it still hit me pretty hard to be honest.'
Except for one incident, when she was photographed smoking a joint at a party - she apologised and said she had got caught up in the moment - Kimberley has been left alone by the tabloids, largely because hers is the steadiest love life in the band. She met her boyfriend, Justin Scott, five years ago when he was in the now defunct boy band Triple 8.
They live together in a house in Princess Park Manor (where Cheryl, Ashley and Nicola used to live), and Justin now works in record promotions and doesn't begrudge her any of her success. 'He's just weirdly understanding about it really,' she says. 'I am lucky. I am no more talented than he is. I've done no more hard work than he has but I've been luckier. He gets it.'
She hopes they will get married at some point. 'In that way he's just a big kid,' she says. 'He still doesn't feel that we're old enough to get married and I'm fine with that. I'd definitely like to have kids with him one day, so let's see.'
Kimberley says she lives a simple life. She is hoping to spend most of January in the sun but it will have to be somewhere with lots of activities because 'Justin is mixed race, so he's not really bothered about sunbathing and he gets bored out of his head'.
Kimberley and Cheryl are the two most maternal members of the band and both are protective of Nicola. Not only is Nicola the baby but she has been consistently mocked for being ginger and scowly. Chris Moyles in particular called her 'horsey chops' and a 'sour-faced old cow'.
Although he has since apologised, Kimberley is unamused. 'Why would you do that to a young girl?' she asks. 'It's hard enough being a teenager. We always told her she was unique. Now she feels happy and that's amazing. It's just growing up really; the only difference is that she's done it in front of people.'
Kimberley might go back to her von Trapp roots and pursue a career in musicals when Girls Aloud call it a day. In the meantime, Gary Barlow has roped her and Cheryl in to climb Kilimanjaro in February in aid of Comic Relief. Neither has done any training at all. 'I'm scared I won't get up it,' she says. If she approaches the mountain with customary Girls Aloud grit, she'll be the first to reach the summit.
SARAH HARDING
Sarah Harding's nickname is Hardcore Harding because she likes a party. She is also the tomboy of the band. 'What you see is what you get,' she says. 'One day I might smile at the camera and the next I might give it the finger.'
Sarah was a proper babe before the other girls got themselves all polished up and, at 27, she looks like a rather hard-faced angel. She was 20 when she entered Popstars: The Rivals.' I had been through the mill,' she says.
She was born in Ascot but moved to Stockport, in Cheshire, when she was 14. Her mother was a secretary and her father is a musician, but she hasn't spoken to him since he walked out of the marriage when she was 15 - there was another woman involved but beyond that she does not elaborate.
She promptly left school, moved into her own studio flat in Stockport and worked four jobs (nightclub promotion, pizza delivery, gigging and a Saturday job at a hairdresser's) to try to support herself. 'I was a real ugly duckling and a tearaway,' she says. 'I had a spiral perm and dark hair and I was a bit wild, but I think a lot of that had to do with the upheaval.
Party animal: Sarah Harding wears a dress by Marc Jacobs at Harvey Nichols, £1,070 (020 7235 5000)
'When my parents split up I felt like piggy in the middle and I wanted my own space and I guess I wanted to grow up too quickly. It was hard work. I was trying to provide for myself and it was a bit of a reality check. My mum was going through a really hard time and I feel bad now, for moving out, but I didn't really know how to cope with it. I just buried my head.'
There's a weariness and a sweetness about Sarah. She's not as tough as she looks, but she's been surviving by herself for so long that she wears slightly grubby invisible armour. At one point she became notorious for her boozing and boyfriends. She went out with her Popstars: The Rivals competitor, Mikey Green, for a couple of years and with Daily Star columnist Joe Mott for a year, as well as being linked with Liverpool footballer John Arne Riise, actor Stephen Dorff and Calum Best.
Anyway, she was out and about more than her bandmates. 'I was single,' she says. 'That's what you do when you're single. And I was finding my feet in London. I'm a lot more settled now but I'm a social animal. I'm trying to enjoy my youth.'
For the past 18 months she has been with Mahiki DJ Tom Crane. They live together in her flat in Camden, north London and plan to move to her house in Buckinghamshire when it is finished. She also owns a buy-to-let in Manchester.
'Tommy is like my best friend,' she says. 'I always knew he had a crush on me but I was seeing someone else [Joe Mott]. He was always going, "So when are you going to marry us, Harding?" And then my relationship broke down and me and Tommy clicked.'
She's happy with Crane but a bit grizzly today. 'We bicker constantly and drive each other crazy. It's straining sometimes. It's hard work going out with a DJ who comes in at five in the morning. I'm knackered a lot more.'
Perhaps the whole idea of settling down is just a bit unnerving for Sarah. 'I'm very career-driven and that's got to come first,' she says. 'If you're going to be married, you can't have a full-time career. That's when marriages break up. That's what I think, or what I've seen. Maybe I don't have much faith in marriage.'
She has found fame 'fickle'. One minute she feels that the band are accepted and credible, and the next she's a slapper and they are irrelevant. 'I think it's come together now but for ages it was like we were a guilty pleasure, and I still feel like I have to justify myself as a person but that's just force of habit. I feel more carefree now. I used to feel that I was under a lot of pressure and that does take its toll.'
She has always wanted to act and has recently finished shooting a Dominic Savage film for the BBC, Freefall, which also stars Alfie Allen and Dominic Cooper. Sarah plays Cooper's girlfriend. She wants to do more acting. 'I'm easing my way in,' she says. 'I don't want to be known as one of those popstars-turned-actresses. I don't want to be used as a cameo. I want to be a serious actress.'
Sarah is a very independent girl both through inclination and habit. I hope she finds some peace. She looks like she could sleep for a year. 'What I want to do is sit around the Aga in my house,' she says. 'But I haven't even got curtains yet.' To console herself, she's just dropped a thousand pounds in Vivienne Westwood because it's next to Daniel Hersheson, her hairdresser. 'I splurged,' she says guiltily, 'and I shouldn't have, what with three mortgages and Christmas and everything.'
But when you're in the most successful British girl band of all time and you've been working since you were 15, maybe you've earned the right to a bit of a splurge.
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