Cheryl Cole features in this month’s Glamour magazine. Read here to see what she discloses:
“Don’t Call Me Perfect” – Cheryl Cole’s Glamour Interview:
In addition to her killer fashion choices and drop-dead gorgeous looks, we love Cheryl Cole for her ability to tell it like it is. Whether discussing her body insecurities or the state of her marriage, she’s as refreshingly frank as ever, as Celia Walden discovers.
Hard to believe, we know, but the girl who is possibly the most famous Geordie on the planet isn’t that bothered about fame. “If someone had told me ten years ago everything that comes with being where I am now, I wouldn’t have gone for it so much,” admits Cheryl Cole, pulling the sleeves of her black cashmere sweater down over her hands. “I never wanted to be famous – what drives me is the desire to be successful, because what’s the point of being a failure and famous?”
Click ‘more’ to read on (with the full Glamour Magazine photo shoot)…
“Don’t Call Me Perfect” – Cheryl Cole’s Glamour Interview:
In addition to her killer fashion choices and drop-dead gorgeous looks, we love Cheryl Cole for her ability to tell it like it is. Whether discussing her body insecurities or the state of her marriage, she’s as refreshingly frank as ever, as Celia Walden discovers.
Hard to believe, we know, but the girl who is possibly the most famous Geordie on the planet isn’t that bothered about fame. “If someone had told me ten years ago everything that comes with being where I am now, I wouldn’t have gone for it so much,” admits Cheryl Cole, pulling the sleeves of her black cashmere sweater down over her hands. “I never wanted to be famous – what drives me is the desire to be successful, because what’s the point of being a failure and famous?”
The reason for her ambivalence? Well, our Angel of the North is the latest in line of home-grown celebrities we’ve catapulted to stardom, only to knock them down when they reach the top. Built up into a quasi-deity last year while combining appearances on ITV’s The X Factor with embarking on a solo career, it was only a matter of time before the popstar-turned-judge with a platinum-selling debut album was torn down. And while the media fuels speculation that her marriage to ‘love rat’ and Chealsea football Ashley Cole is on the brink of collapse, the fashion commentators who previously celebrated her style have had a change of heart and the chatrooms buss with bitchery. Cheryl watches the backlash with astonishment.
“It’s the bitchiness that’s the worst part,” she says, shaking her head. “Because you feel like you can’t win. Bullying is a strong word to use but when you’ve got people on Twitter saying, ‘Look at her fat hanging out’, ‘Look at her cellulite’ or ‘Look at her big nose’ – you feel that people have forgotten you’re a human being. I can’t deal with it any more. What I don’t get is why women do this to one another: we have a shit enough time of it as it is. We need to support each other, not bring each other down.”
Looking at the 26 year old sitting in front of me, it’s easy to see why women might feel a little miffed at her perfection. Despite snippy rumours that in real like she has bad skin or is too thin, she is unarguably beautiful – her foll-like proportions clad in tiny combats and boots, with strong facial expressions and a lingering vulnerability about her eyes.
“I’m not knocking where I am today,” she assures me, cautious not to sound like a whinger. “I do take the role model thing seriously, but it’s a big responsibility and it scared me sometimes.”
Little Miss Perfect just isn’t her, she does to explain. Cheryl smokes, but not in public (“I was really annoyed when they photographed me with a cigarette once”), doesn’t consider herself to be part of the fashion aristocracy (“God knows why I’ve been slapped in the face with the fashionista tab”) and is as insecure about her looks as any other twentysomething woman – more so, perhaps.
“I still have days, all the time, when I feel shitty or like I have cellulite, but then Ashley will tell me that I’m gorgeous and I’ll fell alright,” she volunteers. Before joining Girls Aloud, Cheryl has no idea about food groups, she says. “I didn’t even know what carbohydrates were! Before Popstars [the talent show that discovered, then launched, Girls Aloud], I had got very thin because I’d has an absolute arsehole of a boyfriend who was really giving me a hard time; then when I joined the band I because so content that I put on three stone. I didn’t know what the hell to do, so I because obsessed with it and used to cry myself to sleep.”
Has she mastered a better balance, now? “Not at all,” she admits. “I’ve got a really bad diet. I hate fish and don’t have a regular routine, but I do love cereal. Sometimes I’ll mix every brand we have in the cupboard.” Despite being only 5ft 3in, Cheryl insists, “You’d be amazed what I can put away: I can eat like a 6ft man. I do try and limit my portions, though.”
Surly she wouldn’t want to be thinner than she is now? She looks despondent. “Sometimes it’s just my shape, you know? I have to look at pictures of myself al the time and although I know i’m not fat, I’ll look at my legs and not like what I see. I should try and inspire women to feel good about themselves, but it’s hard.”
Along with the self-assurance you’d expect Cheryl to have in bucket loads, that competitive edge we read so much about – be it with fellow X Factor judge Dannii Minogue or Victoria Beckham – is conspiciousy absent. Just two days before we meet, Cheryl is reported to have beaten Victoria to the position of Britain’s Highest-Earning WAG, but there are no signs of gloating when I bring this up.
“I have a lot of respect and admiration for Victoria,” she shrugs. “She cam from a girl band, like I did, and she’s done brilliantly for herself.” She pauses, biting her lip. “I said something I shouldn’t have once, when I was asked whether it was true that Victoria had been telling me how to wear my hair after everything had happened with Ashley. Like I’d give a shit what my hair looked like after such a traumatic thing! So I retaliated by saying that I hadn’t even heard from her.”
Although she can no longer “be bothered” with the feuds that made headlines a few years ago, there is one person Cheryl is unlikely to become friends with any time soon: former foe, Lily Allen. “I met Lily for the first time last week,” she smiles. “I gave her a hug and said, ‘Nice to meet you,’ to which she said, ‘There is no beef.’ Then I hear she was in the press room taking the piss and I thought: ‘Do you know what? She’s a little girl, but I’m a 26-year-old woman and I’m not at school any more.’”
Those who predict that Cheryl’s career will be a blueprint of Victoria Beckham’s are wrong, she insists. “I would never want to design clothes; it’s just not something I feel passionate about. That said, I would love to have a perfume: how amazing to have your own smell.”
Part of Cheryl’s reluctance to be likened to Ms Beckham, I suspect, stems from her famous rebuttal of the WAG tag – something Posh took on and turned into a multi-million-pound business. “It’s a really derogatory term,” she leans forward, suddenly combative. “A lot of those women do things for themselves but the perception is that all they think about is shoes and handbags. If anything,” she adds, “he [Ashley] is a HAB [husbands and boyfriends] – that’s what we all used to call them when we were on tour. ‘Are the HABs coming down?’ we’d say.” She laughs. “Seriously, though: I hate being talked about as though I’m a rich person’s wife.”
The pair have separated bank accounts, she emphasises, so every penny of that reputed £200,000-a-year beauty budget comes out of her own pocket. “Anything I spend is mine; all Ashley has to do is get me a birthday and Christmas present and he’s sorted.”
the fierce independent Cheryl prides herself on is a product of her tough background in Newcastle upon Tyne, where she and her four siblings – a younger brother, Garry, two half-brothers, Andrew and Joseph, and one half-sister, Gillian – were brought up on an inner city housing estate. Dancing was a way out and after attending the Royal Ballet’s summer school from the age of nine and winning a clutch of local modelling competitions, Cheryl auditioned for Popstars: The Rivals in 2002, joining Nadine Coyle, Sarah Harding, Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh in Girls Aloud.
Having lived through the TV talent show process, Cheryl is prone to getting more emotional about the acts than her co-judges. “I think I was a lot stronger this year,” she smiles, a touch of defensive. “But whatever you’re going through that particular Saturday night – if I’m premenstrual, say – is impossible to turn off.”
If you believe the press, every night is an emotional maelstrom in the Cole household. “Honestly,” she laughs, “we’re quite boring.” And what about appearing on The X Factor minus her wedding ring?
“I wasn’t making a statement,” she almost screams. “Do people really thing that I’m going to have an argument and take my ring off?” Yes, I explain calmly: this is what publicity-seeking celebrities do nowadays. “Really?” She looks incredulous. “Well, it was more of a fashion statement than a marriage statement. Look at the ring,” she extends a tiny hand, weighed down by a large saffron-coloured rock. “As it’s yellow, it doesn’t go with everything. There are loads of occasions when I haven’t worn it.”
There must be times, I press, when she wonders whether she married too young?
“Not really – all the women in my family did the same. Before I met Ashley, I had only had three long-term relationships.” And one-night stands? “I’ve only had one – the thought of being intimate with someone you don’t know really freaks me out. I feel that men should earn that intimacy. I was 15 when I lost my virginity, but I made my boyfriend wait three months, so I was really proud of myself for that. I in the end, I’ve got quite an old-fashioned mentality and I like the fact that by the time I’m 33, Ashley and I will have been married ten years.”
Her life would have been easier, she concedes, had she married a civilian (my word, not hers). “But there is something great about being with someone that gets it. Some of the girls go out with people who are not in the limelight and sometimes they just don’t get how crazy your world is.”
This is right at the core of what we want to know about Cheryl. On buses and sofas, at dinner parties and in the pub, the same question is asked about Ashley, in varying degrees of incredulity: what is she doing with him? Defend him, I tell her. Help us understand what’s kept you with a man who, if you believe the press, has cheated three times in five years. “Right,” rather than clam up, she’s practically rubbing her hands together at the chance to clear his name. “Ashley is totally the opposite of the way he’s perceived. People have this idea that he’s flash, ignorant, and disloyal,” her smile falters, but just for a second, “basically all the ugliest traits a husband could have. But he’s the opposite of all that: he’s never rude or aggressive and will go out of his way to make other people happy. He’s shy and he’s cute, but there is no way of proving that to people.” Still not convinced, I ask her to cite two nice things he’s done for her in the past week.
“OK, so last night, he ran me a bath, made me a cup of tea and then got my razor and shaving roam and put it on the side for me. He’s just ace.” Her face fills with colour and she stops pausing for breath. There’s no doubt about it: the girl is sill smitten.
Does Ashley get upset by what’s written about him?
“The other day was the first time he actually broke down to me about it all,” she confesses. “He called from the garage and said: ‘I feel sick. I’m on the cover of every magazine because apparently I’ve made you cry.’ It was all total rubbish, of course.”
Does she really believe she will stay with Ashley for the rest of her life? She makes an apologetic face: “Yeah, I do.” So why the face? “Because nobody else seems to agree. My family love him but even people really close to me are starting to believe that there’s a rift between us.”
She is dismayed, amusingly, by the fact that she’s never even been tempted to be unfaithful to her husband (“It’s really dull, but maybe I will be tempted. I hope I will”), but when I ask which famous man might do the tempting, she is at a loss to think of one. “There isn’t a single celebrity I find sexy at the moment – not in film or music, although I do quite like that older man thing. They’ve very attractive.”
Perhaps the baby Cheryl has talked so candidly of wanting will be the only thing to put the rumours to rest. “I want one before I’m 30 – and eventually a whole brood. I’m not going to be one of those women who let their career take over; I think your body is designed to have them around that age – too many women are putting it off too long.”
Where she’ll find the time is anyone’s guess: in addition to her successful solo career she is contracted to do three more albums with Girls Aloud. Then there are murmurings that Simon Cowell is lining her up to do The X Factor in the US. “I would do it, obviously, but I don’t want this massive ambition to break America.”
So what else does Cheryl Cole Ltd have in store? “Cheryl Cole Ltd,” this sets off the dimples again. “I like that, but I don’t class myself as a brand, although I know everyone around me does. I do what I like, at the end of the day – I’m just me.”
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