tigerrouge
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The dynamics of her band are changing. Both she and Nadine Coyle are putting out solo works before another Girls Aloud album. Sarah Harding is acting in the new St Trinian’s movie. Nicola Roberts has a new make-up range, and Kimberley Walsh is also pursuing acting. “It’s exciting and scary doing my own stuff,” says Cole. “Growing up I always wanted to perform, but I always wanted to be in a band because it’s a form of protection being in a little gang.”
The Cole rocket is on the up. Her girl won The X Factor. From what I’ve already heard, her solo album is great. The new series of X Factor has begun and everyone’s excited. She shakes her head, closer to despair. “Yes, when is the rug going to be pulled from underneath us?”
I wonder if that pessimism is a Newcastle thing. “Maybe it is.” She likes it that I’m from Newcastle too. There’s an instant bond. Geordies handle disappointment better than success. It’s in the DNA. We talk about Alan Shearer’s ill-fated attempt to save Newcastle United. “When you watched him trying to manage their last few games, it was like his heart was breaking.”
Cole always picks up on heartbreak. And whatever pain came from her Newcastle homeland, she found it difficult to leave. “For me there’s always that feeling, that smell in the air. When I started in the band I was so homesick. London was such a different mentality. People didn’t get my humour. I would go home for an afternoon if I had half a day off. I suppose I was craving normality because everything happened so quickly and I just had to be home for those few hours. But when I got married I felt I had a whole different family and a life in London.”
She is still very close to all of her family, although her brother Andrew seems to have caused her a lot of pain. “I haven’t actually spoken to him for a while, but he’s got a baby and I’m hoping that will be his turning point. But he has been like that my whole life.” Do you mean an addict to alcohol and substances? “Yes, from when I was seven or eight. He is only three years older but he looks much older. It’s all the abuse he’s done to himself over the years.”
She has lived through people close to her being addicts and alcoholics. Incredibly, there was never a time when she was going to turn towards that. “I am not a big drinker. I am starting to learn a lot about myself. Drinking is scary to me now. I’m scared of losing control of how I feel or what I’m thinking. I’ll have the odd glass of wine to relax, but I’m not a mad-night-out person. I don’t like it. My granddad was an alcoholic as well. I would always see him staggering home from the pub, absolutely pissed on Strongbow.” The way many granddads in Newcastle did.
“It affected his kidneys and his mind,” she continues. “He was losing his mind towards the end, all through alcohol. It’s so easy for a lot of people to knock the drink back but I am determined not to let myself go down that road.
"The rest of my family have got normal lives, although they are struggling a bit with the recession, so I am trying to help them out. I love my parents to bits. I don’t know what I’d do without them. I am like both of them, oddly enough, but they both say I am not like either of them. My mother is a really sensitive person and really caring and my dad has a lovely nature. My dad met my mum when he was 17 and she was 21 and she already had three kids. Amazing that he took that on. My mother says she was running away from her childhood, that’s why she had her family young. She stays with me a lot. I love having her there. My dad is fascinated by the whole thing and really proud. Sometimes he gets watery eyes just from talking about it and says, ‘I could burst with pride.’ I can only imagine how that feels, being proud of a child.”
Are you planning on having children? “Yes, preferably sooner rather than later,” she says emphatically, so much so that I begin to wonder — she’d been complaining about feeling sick earlier and I ask her is that because you’re pregnant now? “No, chance would be a fine thing. I haven’t been home.” It wouldn’t be very good timing right now, would it, I say, feeling that I need to console. “It would never be perfect timing, so I am not trying, I am preventing. Having a baby is important to me because I am from a big family. I have friends who put it off and I don’t want to do that. I feel like all this that I do is just make-believe and at the end of the make-believe I will always have my family. So if I am blessed, touch wood and all that, I would love a big family. But nobody knows, do they, nobody knows.” She says it taking in the full enormity of what a baby would really mean.
Cole has a face you can read. She is open, connected, but when it comes to discussing her husband she seems conflicted. Partly, I suspect, because she’s private, guarded about those thoughts and emotions, and still fearful of being judged. Also, Ashley Cole is involved in legal action with The Sun over claims that his privacy was invaded by the kiss-and-tells of Aimee Walton and Brooke Healy.
She admits that she finds it difficult to trust, and I wonder how that works in a personal relationship. “It doesn’t really,” she says, and she laughs a full, ironic laugh. “I am very mistrusting. But at the same time I am not going to allow the few people who have misplaced my trust to make me mistrust the good people. It’s a constant battle. My mind is a battlefield. Maybe there’s a song in there.”
How does she relax? “I like spending time with my dogs. I’ve got two chihuahuas, Buster and Coco. They make me feel chilled and homely. There’s nothing like the comfort of your animals,” she says, and in her voice you can hear her missing them. “Buster is a sandy colour with white long-haired legs. He is very loving. He needs to be loved and cuddled constantly and he wants to be stroked. Coco is black with fawn markings and she used to be schizophrenic and paranoid, but she’s really changed.
I drummed it into her: you will be loved, you will enjoy cuddles, and now she follows me all over the house. Ashley is always, ‘Leave her alone, let her be,’ and I’m like, ‘No, I want to kiss her.’ She’s a smelly dog as well. She’s my little baby. She needs protecting. They are definitely more mine than Ashley’s, but he does love them really.
He’s more like Buster than Coco. He’s a simple person, Ashley. Nothing under the surface with him. Nothing’s a problem, everything’s easy and comfortable. He’s a genuine nice person.” Does he need to be loved and stroked all the time, like Buster? “I think we all do, deep down. There’s nothing better than being loved and stroked.”
There is no doubt that Cheryl Cole is lovable. You just want to hug her and hope that the allegations about her husband cheating on her weren’t true. The story goes that he was very drunk in a club and went home with the hairdresser. He alleges he was incapable of any sexual activity. Whether the story is true or not, Cole, in order to survive, must believe he is innocent and genuine. Genuine is a word she uses often for him. A word she has not used for her other boyfriends. Not that there have been that many. Cheryl Cole is a woman who feels things intensely. The fact that her husband came home with vomit stains and tales of a drunken night out was bad enough to send her into a spiral, to question everything and eventually to tell him he could never do this again.
She is the Angel of the North who cries very easily. She has cried quite a lot. “Because that’s life, isn’t it? Life is **** sometimes. I’ve definitely had my fair share of that.” You want that fair share to have been in the past, done and dusted. You want her rebuilt, stronger, but just as lovely. You can’t help wondering if Ashley Cole is really good enough. You see her loving the chihuahuas as babies and wanting to get pregnant, but should she dare to? Her mother is always telling her to feel the fear and do it anyway. “If you allowed fear to control you, you wouldn’t do anything in life, would you?” Cole says.
A few weeks later in west London, Cole is finishing her album at another recording studio. We talk during a break. We eat sushi and chocolate. Cole is wearing drainpipe jeans that make her look very tiny. She looks surprised when I say so. “I wish I had a workout routine. I love going on tour for that reason. You wake up and you can go to the gym. I’ve got a boxed set of Yogalates that I put on whenever I can, but it’s not very often. I enjoy the slowness of it, although I like getting into a sweat as well. I’m an extremist. I work out until I’m passing out or not at all. When I was little I wanted to be Margot Fonteyn. I wanted to be a beautiful ballerina. My mother couldn’t afford to send me to the Royal Ballet, but I got there through sponsorship. I did a local TV programme and the Daily Star paid for me to go. How ironic.”
She was nine years old when she went to London to attend the Royal Ballet summer school.
“I felt out of place. I was the council schoolgirl among the privately educated. I wasn’t bullied but I felt shoved to the side. I came back speaking posh and my mother was like, ‘What the hell happened to you?’ After that I didn’t go back to ballet, I started singing after that.”
In typical Cole fashion it took rejection to define her. “My mother is tone deaf and deaf in one ear. She’s got selective hearing as well.” Cole jokes in a way that you imagine her bantering with her mother. “She hasn’t moved in, but she stays a lot. Neither of us could cope without her. Ashley’s mother’s there a lot too. Thank God they get on. They are both the first people at a party.”
Don’t you feel restricted with the mums there?
“No, it’s a big house and I’m not one of those people who wants to walk around the house naked, so nothing is restricted. If anything it’s helpful having her around. I’ll get home and she makes me spaghetti bolognaise. She’s no Jamie Oliver and she doesn’t do lasagne from scratch every day, but when she’s not there I’m lost.” What do you do? “Watch Coronation Street. Order in. Ash and I love to watch crap on the telly in pyjamas eating HobNobs. Nothing better. I used to be a massive fan of X Factor, but I can’t think of anything worse than watching myself speak.”
Is it true that Ashley called you up once and asked how to cook Super Noodles? “That’s true. And it says on the packet ‘boil for five minutes’. He’s improved, though. He’s progressed to Nutella on toast.” Has he improved in every way? “Yes.” Do you mean he’s a good boy now? “Yes,” she says very quietly, her eyes downcast. It’s still not comfortable to talk about him. I suppose you wouldn’t be with him if he wasn’t? “Exactly.” Do you fully trust him? “I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t trust anybody in life except my mother and my dogs. I’m scared to let people know how much they mean to me, and it’s scary that you can love a small hairy thing so much.”
We talk about unconditional love. Is it possible other than from animals and babies? “I’ve just had my nephews down. I see that quality in them. Their love is innocent and unconditional.” Does Mr Super Noodle have that quality? She giggles. “Yeah. We’re happy. You have to go through life. You have to have that learning curve. That pleasure versus pain. In general my life goes **** **** ****, amazing amazing amazing. I’m on the biggest roller coaster ever. I feel like for the past six months I’m starting to level out. I’m sure at some point the nemesis will come back, but I feel like when the bad things happen there’ll always be something good coming.”
