Cheryl Cole: Her Story - the Unauthorized Biography (20 page)

After dessert, Cheryl and Ashley headed out to the dancefloor for their first dance. But Cheryl had a surprise in store for her new husband: she had arranged for soul star John Legend – Ashley’s favourite singer whom they’d been to see on their first date – to fly over from the States to perform. Ashley couldn’t believe his eyes when the singer appeared on the revolving stage. After Legend performed a handful of songs, the guests, including the Sugababes and Jamelia, hit the dancefloor and threw some shapes until the early hours of the morning.

For the rest of the evening, Cheryl mingled with her guests, telling each and every one of them that she was glowing with excitement and was so pleased that she was now officially Mrs Cheryl Cole. She was the happiest girl in the world.

Later in the evening she dashed upstairs, her face aching from smiling so broadly, and changed into her going-away dress, another Roberto Cavalli creation. Returning to the party,
she said her final goodbyes and, taking Ashley by the hand, headed off into the night before they jetted out to the Seychelles for their romantic honeymoon.

After their luxury honeymoon, it was straight back to work for Cheryl. First up was a co-hosting stint on
The Friday Night Project
with Alan Carr and Justin Lee Collins. On the show, Girls Aloud got to exercise their comedy muscles in a series of sketches. ‘We had such a great time,’ Cheryl told the
Sun.
‘Alan and Justin just had us in hysterics. And we got to try our hands at acting! But we couldn’t keep a straight face.’

Shortly after this they performed some one-off summer gigs, including the V Festival. The girls had been nervous about their gig at this world-famous event, fearful that they’d be booed off stage by fans of more ‘credible’ bands on the line-up. But they were pleasantly surprised that their set, which included all their hits, plus their version of ‘I Predict A Riot’, went down a storm. ‘We were s***ting ourselves thinking people were going to hate us,’ Cheryl said afterwards in the
Sun
, ‘but the tent we played at was packed and they had to shut it because it was overcrowded. We were playing the same day as Radiohead and Keane. We couldn’t believe it.’

In October, the girls unleashed a brand new single, ‘Something Kinda Ooh’, which would be the lead release from their upcoming greatest hits package
The Sound of Girls Aloud.
The track was an instant smash and fans deemed it by far the best song of their career to date. The deliciously campy tune proved to have mass appeal and smashed into the charts at number three, their highest chart position since ‘I’ll Stand By You’ in 2004. A week later, their album
The Sound of Girls Aloud
hit the shops and was a dream for their fans, as well as those new to their music. Not only were all the hits there to enjoy, there were three new tracks – ‘Something Kinda Ooh’, ‘Money’ and a cover of Tiffany’s ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’. And for the fans who had already purchased their hits, there was a limited bonus disc version of the album, which featured some delightful rarities, including, cheekily, a far superior version of One True Voice’s career-breaking single ‘Sacred Trust’, a cover of Blondie’s ‘Hanging On The Telephone’, a live version of ‘I Predict A Riot’, plus a handful of new tracks such as ‘Singapore’ and ‘Loving Is Easy’, plus new versions of ‘Sound Of The Underground’, ‘No Good Advice’ and ‘Wake Me Up’. The perfect package for devoted fans who lived and breathed the girls. The joyous track list and bonus disc worked their magic on the charts, giving the girls their first number one album, which went on to sell 815,000 copies.

In the lead-up to Christmas 2006, Girls Aloud released another single on 18 December, this time a remixed version of ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’, which was featured on the soundtrack to the film
A Boy Girl Thing.
Also around this time, some of the girls took part in a one-off special for ITV2 called
Ghosthunting with Girls Aloud.
Hosted by Yvette Fielding, it borrowed a
format from her own Living TV show
Most Haunted
, only with celebrity guests thrown in the mix to stir up some spooks.

The girls, minus Nadine, who didn’t want to mess around with the supernatural, were packed off to disused Crossley Hospital morgue in Cheshire and the seventeenth-century mansion, Plas Teg, in Pontlydyn, Wales. Although they were fearful of fooling around with things they didn’t understand, Cheryl admitted that she wanted to find out more about ghosts and ghouls and to see if they really did exist! To some degree Cheryl was a believer. Not only had that psychic predicted her romance with Ashley, she once thought she’d seen a spook of her own.

‘I was in on my own at home and my dog started barking,’ she revealed in an ITV press release interview. ‘He was going mad and I didn’t dare look. When I did, it was some smoke! I screamed the place down. I thought it was a ghost because I was terrified.’ On the
Ghosthunting
show, the girls’ curiosity turned to terror when they started filming. During one of the scenes, Cheryl’s most nerve-tingling moment was when she felt as though someone had stroked her arm.

‘It felt like someone brushing my arm, like a stroke almost,’ she recalled. ‘It happened really quickly. It was unexpected and I was really scared. I definitely thought it was something.’

Following the show, Cheryl became convinced that there is life after death. ‘I think something definitely exists. The ghosts do seem to go to very old places though.’

And it wasn’t only ghosts Girls Aloud were facing up to in December – they were bringing politicians to account in the
New Statesman.
Their controversial interview with the highbrow political magazine was a surprise to their fans – and
it was a welcome relief for the band to answer questions about serious subjects and not merely to be hassled about which stars they hated or what was going on in their love lives. In the feature, the girls said they wanted to make politics more user-friendly.

‘It just isn’t talked about in normal magazines,’ Sarah said. ‘We never get asked about who we vote for. Everyone has ideas about what we want for the country but people need to vote to make that happen.’

Cheryl agreed. ‘Our fans would definitely listen to us,’ she said. ‘They’d think, “Well, if Kimberley and Cheryl and Nicola are interested in it, then I want to know about it.”’ She added, ‘Politicians know that we get listened to by more young fans than they do. That’s why David Cameron said he fancied me. He was just trying to be cool. I bet he couldn’t name a single song of ours. Do I fancy him? No! Politicians should stop trying to be cool and get on with running the country.’

She also criticized the WAG culture once again, suggesting that since the heyday of the Spice Girls, the notion of Girl Power was all but forgotten.

‘I think that’s all gone. When the Spice Girls went, Girl Power went, too,’ she said. ‘They didn’t actually change anything. It’s bad really. These days young girls are more likely to aspire to marrying footballers and living luxurious lifestyles. It’s the media that puts them in that state of mind … What kind of aspiration is that? Footballers’ wives are just as bad as benefit scroungers – it’s just a higher class of sponger.’

Having proved they were more than just airhead popstars, the girls were back to doing what they did best – selling out their forthcoming Summer 2007 Greatest Hits tour: tickets had
sold out within days of going on sale, and they were looking forward to starting work on their fourth studio album.

The new year was a lucrative one for the girls. Their manager had brokered deals for them to front a variety of products. Back in 2006, they had signed up to front Coke Zero. In 2007, they had been signed up to front big-money deals for Sunsilk shampoos and, later in the year, for the Purple Samsung phones. Both launches were celebrated with flamboyant bashes.

In February 2007, Cheryl and Kimberley took part in a stylish photo shoot for
OK!
magazine, which was based on an Italian film from the sixties. When the girls saw the finished shots, they were delighted, and the set of pictures, shot by Sven Arnstein, became their instant favourites.

In the
OK!
interview accompanying the shoot, Cheryl spoke for the first time about the gay rumours that had plagued her husband the previous year, and explained that she had dismissed the allegations as silly, but that it had been a tough time for the pair of them. She also hit back at criticism she and Ashley had received for selling their wedding to
OK!
magazine.

‘I didn’t care,’ she said. ‘The people who slagged us off were the ones who write nasty, hurtful things all year round. At the end of the day, I wanted my fans to see the wedding as it was. If it wasn’t for them I would never have met and married Ashley. I also wanted it to be documented so my kids could see it. I wouldn’t do it any differently – I had the wedding of my dreams.’

She also revealed that Ashley was a rubbish house husband. ‘He doesn’t do a thing,’ she laughed. ‘Not a thing. Maybe he’ll make me the odd cup of tea, but that’s it. Luckily my mam lives
with us and she’ll do lots of stuff. But we’re having an amazing time. I love being married.’

In fact, marriage, she said, had changed her and calmed her down and she admitted that she would rather be at home watching the TV and eating a takeaway than being out on the tiles.

In the same article Cheryl spoke out on the shock news at the time that her old
Popstars: The Rivals
mate Javine Hylton had recently been found in bed with pop singer and co-star of the musical
Daddy Cool
, MC Harvey, who was married to singer Alesha Dixon from Mis-Teeq at the time.

‘All I know is if it happened to me, the guy would be dead,’ she said, not realizing that these words would come back to haunt her a year later. ‘Of course, it depends on the circumstances. If everything was happy at home and Ashley did what Harvey did I would shrivel up and die. But if things weren’t going well at home it wouldn’t come as a surprise … Trust is so important to me. I have been cheated on so many times in my past. And when I was I gave the blokes a few rights and lefts.’

In March, the girls were back at work again and recorded a charity single for Comic Relief with the Sugababes. Their track, a cover of ‘Walk This Way’ by Run DMC and Aerosmith, was an instant hit and went straight to the top of the charts, raising much-needed money for good causes. ‘It’s a great single and will raise money for people living in really difficult situations here and in Africa,’ Kimberley said in the
Sun.

The girls threw their weight behind Comic Relief, with Kimberley flying out to South Africa to see where the money would be spent. Meanwhile, Cheryl, who had stayed in the UK, donated a pair of shoes that she’d worn in the ‘Something
Kinda Ooh’ video for auction on eBay to raise money for Comic Relief, and took part in the charity’s special episode of
Celebrity Apprentice.

On the show, which had been filmed the December before, Cheryl was in a team with football manager Karren Brady, fashion guru Trinny Woodall, comedienne Jo Brand and actress Maureen Lipman. In spite of some initial fears, Cheryl enjoyed her experience. ‘I would definitely do it again,’ she said in the
Sun.
‘We raised over a million pounds, which was the aim.’ However, she admitted that the experience wasn’t quite a walk in a park. ‘It was much worse than the nerves I get when I go on stage because I was completely outside my comfort zone,’ she said. ‘When I walked in on the first day I felt intimidated. But I knew it was important we raised lots of money for
Comic Relief so
I felt a great sense of responsibility.’

Her performance on the show was so good that Sir Alan Sugar sent her a note to congratulate her, saying if he was to hire anybody from the show it would be her. He later said in an interview with
Zoo
magazine, ‘Cheryl Cole was very impressive. Everyone was expecting this dolly bird, but she showed street smarts, determination, and great commitment and very impressive business acumen. She’ll go far!’

Her appearance on the show also led to Simon Cowell getting in touch with her to invite her to become one of the judges on
Britain’s Got Talent
, but Cheryl, touched by the invitation, declined, believing she didn’t have the guts to do it.

‘I don’t think I can be cruel to anyone, really, and who am I to end their dreams in one go?’ she said to the
Sun.
‘I wouldn’t become a judge. I don’t think I’d be qualified. Who am I to judge other people? I know people think I’m fiery but I think
I’d be too diplomatic. I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of criticism.’

In May, just before the girls’ Greatest Hits tour was about to commence, they got their first taste of movie stardom when they shot a scene for the remake of
St Trinian
’s, starring Colin Firth, Russell Brand and Rupert Everett. The girls, dressed in school uniforms, had easy roles, playing a band at the school dance, but they loved the experience. ‘It was a lot different to filming a video. I had to keep getting told not to look into the camera,’ said Cheryl on
The Making of St Trinian’s.

Once filming had wrapped, the girls got down to rehearsing for their Greatest Hits show. This was going to be a spectacular tour and Cheryl couldn’t contain her excitement. ‘It’s our biggest show yet, with all our hits, all our career so far rounded up in one show. If you are a Girls Aloud fan you’re going to wet your pants.’

She was not wrong. Kicking off their run of dates in her home town of Newcastle, Cheryl and the girls dazzled fans with barely-there outfits, wild and sweaty dance routines and more smash hits than you could shake a stick at.

During the tour, Cheryl opened up about some of her body woes: ‘I’m not happy with my body,’ she told
Sunday Magazine.
‘I have to watch my weight and really put myself through it, trying silly diets or doing stupid gym workouts … When I joined the band I put on a lot of weight and at one point was 9st 7lb. Now I have one day a week when I eat whatever I like. Without that luxury, I’d go crazy!’ She also confessed in the same interview that Ashley made her feel sexy and happy – and that they wanted children, though were not in any rush.