Cheryl Cole: Her Story - the Unauthorized Biography (23 page)

As she swept past the waiting paparazzi, Cheryl was facing one of the toughest days of her career: she was going to have to make hard decisions that could make or break the dreams of thousands of hopefuls.

Would she be able to cope with youngsters breaking down in tears in front of her? She knew she had to be strong and consider each and every person on their merits: she owed it to them and to her fellow judges to be fair and honest no matter what.

Of course, having been through the process herself, Cheryl knew that whatever comments she made, she had to be sensitive. She wasn’t one of those people who would purposefully crush someone’s dreams: she of all people knew how important it was to dream. But she also knew that it was important to let people know if they were wasting their time. It was best to let them down gently, so they could go off and find another path to take.

It was a strange feeling for Cheryl to think that she’d come full circle. Just six years ago, she had been one of those nervous auditionees standing in a queue waiting to be judged. And from what she could remember it was the most arduous experience of her life.

‘I sang almost every note out of tune,’ Cheryl told Holly Willoughby on ITV2’s
The Xtra Factor.
‘Nerves can totally change your voice and I don’t think I was that good. I can’t believe I made it through.’

But now she was sitting on the
X Factor
judging panel, deciding how someone’s life would pan out. The show’s creator, Simon Cowell, proved a huge supporter of Cheryl’s appointment, perhaps surprisingly, given his criticisms of Girls Aloud back in 2003. Not long after the girls had enjoyed their first number-one single with ‘Sound Of The Underground’, Simon took it upon himself to poke fun at his rival Louis Walsh’s latest signing, focusing particularly on Cheryl Tweedy. The
Sun
reported him as saying: ‘The Geordie girl, she’s crap, I remember seeing her last audition and she couldn’t sing a note in tune. I’m amazed she got through.’

Luckily, Cheryl forgave Simon’s typically outrageous comments, and although she had turned down his offer to appear as a judge on
Britain’s Got Talent
in 2007, she declared at the time, ‘I think he has a good heart. He really is a big pussy cat.’ Cowell wasn’t dissuaded by her rejection of his offer, and his persistence paid off when she agreed to appear alongside him on
The X Factor.
However, when he was later grilled by Cheryl on the show about his 2003 comments, he denied any memory of having made them!

Simon explained his determination to get Cheryl on board
at
The X Factor
conference: ‘I have always wanted Cheryl to be part of one of these programmes. I was first impressed by her when she was taking part in
Celebrity Apprentice
and she came to me and charmed me out of a very big cheque.’

But Simon wasn’t the only issue. A few years previously, Dannii Minogue, Cheryl’s fellow judge on
The X Factor
, had been involved in a couple of run-ins with Cheryl and Girls Aloud. When Cheryl was asked by
Top of the Pops
magazine in 2003 whether she would consider plastic surgery, Cheryl stated that ‘if you’re not happy within yourself and you’ve got the money to have plastic surgery, then go for it’, but added that she felt some stars went too far – and cited Dannii Minogue. ‘I think Dannii Minogue should get all her plastic surgery reduced and go back to the way she was before. She doesn’t look natural. I don’t think men find that attractive.’

Dannii later had her say at a 2003 summer roadshow gig that both she and Girls Aloud were attending, though her comments were directed at Nicola. ‘I think the redhead’s got it in for me,’ she said in the
Mirror.
‘After a show in Scotland, Nicola was saying vile stuff about me. I saw her at last year’s Disney Awards and just smiled. I mean, the punch-ups, going to court… I don’t want to get involved – I’m no chav!’

However, it seemed as though both Dannii and Cheryl had laid the past to rest, with Dannii congratulating her on landing the new job back in June 2008 at a press conference for the show. In an interview for
OK!
magazine around the time of the start of
The X Factor
, Dannii said that she wasn’t sure if everything Cheryl had supposedly said about her was true or if she had merely been misquoted. Besides, Dannii was probably relieved that there was some new blood on the
programme. Her experience on the show the previous year hadn’t exactly been the most pleasurable. ‘I was just very unwelcome,’ Dannii told
OK!
‘Louis and Sharon said that I shouldn’t have been there: “She’s not got the music backing.” That was tough to hear and it upset me. But hearing them say that made me more determined. When someone says I don’t have the qualifications to do something then I will prove that I do.’

But while Cheryl’s appointment proved a popular choice with viewers, Cheryl’s pals the Sugababes didn’t seem as convinced. Keisha Buchanan told Virgin Radio: ‘Actually, I would have preferred Boy George. He has got so much more experience, and so many more years behind him. I think he would have been much better as the judge.’ Amelle Berrabah agreed: ‘Yeah, Boy George has generations more on her. Not that Cheryl hasn’t got any experience, but someone who has been going for as long as he has should have been given a chance.’ But Heidi Range rated Cheryl’s chances on the show. ‘Well, Cheryl did come from reality TV herself… so I guess that does make sense. But she could do with some more experience.’

Sweeping into Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium in London, Cheryl shrugged off any thoughts of these negative comments when she was warmly greeted by the
X Factor
production team, who talked her through the day’s events. Afterwards, she joined the judges. Dannii leaned in and wished her luck. ‘I know how scary it is,’ she told her, ‘but just be yourself, that’s why you’re here, that’s why we’re all chosen, to just be ourselves.’

And then, at last, the moment arrived. It was time to become one of the four judges on
The X Factor.
Cheryl told an ITV press
conference that she felt nervous on her first day, taking her seat at the judges’ table. Simon, Louis and Dannii had years of judging experience between them; she was the newbie. Would she be able to cope with the pressures of making or breaking hopefuls’ dreams?

The first contestant up was nineteen-year-old Dominic Moone, who unnerved her straight away. Even before he sang a note, he broke down in tears before them, overcome by the moment. But he managed to pull himself together after a quick breather. Unfortunately, his performance just didn’t cut it and Cheryl had to agree with her fellow judges that it was a ‘no’.

Once she knew she could cope with a situation like young Dominic, over the next few days Cheryl got into the swing of things. As the show visited Cardiff, Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow, Cheryl became more comfortable in her role and actually started to enjoy her time on the panel, even joking with contestants that they wouldn’t want Louis as their boss because ‘he’s rubbish’. She was firm and gave the contestants her honest opinions.

Of course, breaking someone’s heart wasn’t easy for Cheryl and tears flowed freely, and one contestant in particular proved to be too hard for Cheryl to judge. When the show arrived in Manchester, a twenty-four-year-old wannabe called Nikk Mager managed to turn Cheryl into a sobbing wreck. When he strode into the audition room, she looked up to see the same Nikk Mager with whom she had auditioned on
Popstars: The Rivals
six years previously.

Although Nikk hadn’t made it through to One True Voice, he had gone on to enjoy a brief pop career with the runner-up
band, Phixx. Since then, however, he had been playing working men’s clubs, but still wanted to make it big. So when he heard about the new series of
The X Factor
he decided he’d give his singing another shot. Cheryl was shocked to see him: it had been years since they’d seen each other. She knew that this was going to be a hard audition to sit through, so she turned to Simon and said, ‘Look, I can’t do this one, it wouldn’t be fair.’ Simon reassured her that it would be okay and told her to sit through the audition.

When Nikk began to sing Bette Midler’s ‘The Rose’, it was clear on the faces of Louis, Dannii and Simon that the audition wasn’t going well and Cheryl became very uncomfortable. She knew that Nikk had talent, she had seen that six years ago, but she also knew that the other judges weren’t responding well to his audition. There was no way she could destroy what he had himself called his last chance at success. As Simon told Nikk that his journey was over, Cheryl couldn’t take any more, and said, ‘I can’t do this,’ then stepped down from the panel while the judges gave Nikk their review.

Standing in the wings, Cheryl could see Nikk’s face fall as Simon, Dannii and Louis gave him the bad news that he wasn’t going to make it through to boot camp. Cheryl really had been one of the lucky ones. Six years ago she had appeared on a TV show and now because of that she was in Girls Aloud, one of the most successful female bands of all time. Meanwhile, hopefuls like Nikk Mager were cast to the wayside every day.

When the judges had finished giving Nikk their decision, Cheryl dashed over to him and held him close, telling him she was sorry that it had worked out the way it had. Afterwards, he told the
Huddersfield Gazette
: ‘I was gutted, absolutely
devastated. For a full week it was like my world had ended. I felt cheated because I believe I should have gone through. I thought it had gone okay. It could have gone better – I had had one hour’s sleep and had a chest infection so I wasn’t at my best. But in my opinion I showed potential and should have gone through to the next stage. After I had finished, Cheryl came over and looked really upset and after I left she apparently started crying. It’s nice to know that she still cares and didn’t want to see me go through that.’

After his audition, Cheryl had indeed broken down in tears, and admitted that she now realized that her job on
The X Factor
was going to be harder than even she had thought. ‘That was awful,’ she sobbed on the show. ‘You see someone like Nikk struggle for years, just to be crushed again. I can’t imagine how he’s feeling.’

But she had to force herself to deal with the cruel side of her job, and took comfort from the fact that she was finding some rich new talent: for every one hundred or so contestants they rejected, the judges would stumble across a rare find, like Alexandra, the sixteen-year-old from Bridgend who dazzled them with her stunning rendition of ‘Fields Of Gold’, or Austin Drage who sang Boyz II Men’s ‘End Of The Road’, or boyband JLS, whose tight harmonies during their version of Shai’s ‘If I Ever Fall In Love’ impressed Cheryl so much she declared she wanted them in her category when the show moved on to the stage where each judge individually mentored a group. And then there’d be wannabes like Rachel Hylton, who at twenty-six was the mother of five children, the oldest of whom was thirteen. When she stood before them she moved them with her dedication to better her life, after years of drug addiction
and imprisonment. And when she sang Amy Winehouse’s ‘I’m No Good’, the judges were blown away, not just because she had an amazing voice but because she had real passion and a hunger to succeed.

Cheryl would later reveal that her experience during the auditions had been tough and that every night she would go home physically and emotionally exhausted. ‘At the end of every day I would go home and cry,’ she told
The People.
‘It’s such a rollercoaster. By the end you are mentally drained. The only way I can deal with it is to go home and talk it through with my mum.’

As the audition process rolled on, Cheryl was able to fit in some personal time with Ashley, during which they had managed to put the past behind them once and for all. During the Manchester auditions in June, Ashley joined Cheryl at the Radisson Hotel for her twenty-fifth birthday celebrations. According to
Hello!
magazine the couple spent the late afternoon holed up in their room before heading out to Wings, a local Chinese restaurant, where she was joined by her mum Joan, Ashley’s mum Sue, her manager Hillary Shaw and a small gaggle of friends and family – including Nicola Roberts. Just prior to her birthday Cheryl had commented to
Hello!
magazine that she was nervous about turning twenty-five. ‘I was only eighteen when I joined the group. But twenty-five! I feel so old.’ By the time the champagne started to flow, however, she forgot all about reaching such a milestone age.

Inside the restaurant, Ashley had arranged for balloons to be set up around their table, and when the moment arrived for the birthday cake to be brought through, the group sang a rousing rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’. ‘It was quite a simple
celebration, but perfect,’ one of the guests confided to
Hello!
‘Cheryl was thrilled with all her gifts, which included an Yves Saint Laurent clutch bag from Nicola, a beautiful gold chain from Hillary and some scented candles from Dannii Minogue.’ But Cheryl’s favourite gifts came from husband Ashley, who had thought long and hard about what to get his wife. Among his booty of gifts was a Hublot Big Bang Cappuccino watch, worth an estimated £35,000, a £525 pair of high-heeled black shoe boots by exclusive designer Rupert Sanderson, and several sets of Agent Provocateur lingerie, once again suggesting that the fire and spice was back in their relationship! ‘He picked out all the presents himself,’ the same guest revealed to
Hello!
‘Cheryl didn’t have a clue what she was getting. He got it just right. She loved them all – what girl wouldn’t?’

So it seemed that after much pleading, Ashley had finally convinced Cheryl to take him back. As Ashley had launched a legal case against the newspapers regarding the allegations back in January, neither Ashley nor Cheryl were able to talk publicly about their relationship, but they managed to let everyone know that things were better by being photographed on a trip to Spain. The couple were seen strolling hand in hand across a beach, and frolicking in a pool. While her wedding ring was still missing from Cheryl’s finger, it looked very much like the relationship was going well.