The Observer profile: Cheryl Cole, the nation's new sweetheart (original) (raw)

When Cheryl Cole first appeared in front of the television cameras, she was 19 years old and wanted to be a pop star more than anything else in the world. It was 2002. She was auditioning for a reality TV programme and the chance to be part of what was destined to become Britain's most successful girl band.

At 19, Cole possessed none of the self-assurance that would later become one of her defining characteristics. She had mousy brown hair, wonky teeth and wore a sparkly, red crucifix necklace. She sang an S Club 7 song in a soft Newcastle accent. It was an unexceptional performance. And yet, by the end of the 30-second auditioning process, one of the male judges seemed almost insensate with lust.

'You have the most beautiful eyes and skin I think I've ever seen in my life,' said record producer Pete Waterman, slack-jawed. After she walked out of the studio, Waterman could barely contain himself: 'You'd need to be dead if you didn't think she was stunning.'

Six years later, Cole continues to have much the same seismic effect on both men and women. She is one-fifth of Girls Aloud, the UK's most successful girl band, with five platinum albums and a record-breaking 19 consecutive top 10 singles to their name. But it is as a judge and mentor on The X Factor, Simon Cowell's primetime, all-singing talent show on ITV, that Cole has won a new legion of admirers.

During the auditioning process, she was empathetic and warm to the point of a perpetual, lip-wobbling teariness. 'You sound like you've been through a lot,' she said to one pretty blonde teenager whose mother had passed away. When Daniel, 38, revealed his late wife had urged him to try out for the programme before she died, Cole's tears glistened fetchingly on her beautifully bronzed cheekbones. She cried. We cried. But she looked prettier than us when she did it.

'She cries so much I'm worried there's going to be an imminent shortage of waterproof mascara in the Greater London area,' says novelist Kathy Lette, a close friend of fellow X Factor judge Dannii Minogue. 'I'm beginning to think she's been taken hostage by her hormones. I think she fulfils the fantasy that a lot of men have about women - that they are emotional, gentle and they pour oil on troubled waters.'

Now, every Saturday evening, Cole appears in our living rooms as a radiant vision of dimples, sequins and white teeth. When asked to comment on the contestants' performances, she is both forthright and sensitive, a winning combination of feistiness and femininity. She is neither too nasty (like Cowell), nor too defensive (like Louis Walsh). Minogue, with her curiously immobile forehead and heavy eyeliner, suffers unfavourably from any comparison.

According to publicist Max Clifford, her popularity is a consequence of both her credibility and her sincerity. 'She knows her subject because, professionally, she does exactly what she's judging,' he says. 'At the same time, she comes across in a very sensitive way. There's nothing flash, brash or hard about her. She's got a natural humility.'

Much of her charm stems from the fact that she is one of those rare women whose appeal transcends the gender divide. You can buy 'I love Cheryl Cole' badges on eBay. On Facebook, the social barometer of whimsical modern popularity, more than 800 women are members of a group called 'Yes, I'm a girl ... yes, I'm straight ... but, man, I fancy Cheryl Cole!' The (predominantly female) editorial team at Grazia magazine recently admitted they had a 'style crush' on her. David Cameron once named her as his favourite member of Girls Aloud. Even Julie Burchill calls her 'a dignified, level-headed and compassionate national treasure'.

It is an astonishing comeback for someone who, five years ago, was charged with racially aggravated assault after allegedly calling a black lavatory assistant a 'jigaboo' before charmingly punching her in the face. Cole was given 120 hours' community service and ordered to pay her victim £500 compensation for the assault but cleared of any racial motive.

At the time, the incident was seen by some commentators as the inevitable by-product of taking a tough girl out of Newcastle and catapulting her too quickly into the unforgiving limelight of celebrity. Cole grew up on a council estate in Heaton, a place overrun by drugs and crime. 'Heroin was there for the taking,' she later said. 'I could easily have taken that route if I'd wanted to.' Her older brother Andrew appeared in court earlier this year charged with interfering with a motor vehicle.

Cole showed signs of early rebellion at school - on one occasion, the headmaster suspended her for two weeks for swearing on a bus - and left at 16 with few qualifications. Her parents, Joan and Gary, struggled to make ends meet - she remembers subsisting on a diet of baked beans, eggs, fishfingers and bread. For her 18th birthday, she went as a treat to an all-you-can-eat £5 Chinese buffet. Then, a year later, she auditioned for Popstars: The Rivals and her life changed dramatically.

'I think she struggled at the beginning,' says a singer-songwriter who has worked with Cole in the past. 'It was difficult to be transplanted from that environment into this mad, pop world.

'Cheryl doesn't drink and she's not a real partygoer. When the girls [her bandmates] are coming back from a night on the town, Cheryl is generally the sensible one in the back of the minivan, complaining she can't hear herself think.

'But she's a lovely, warm person and she's genuine, too - what you see is what you get. She's very soft-hearted and she doesn't have much confidence in her own talent. I remember working on some songs with her and getting her to write her own lyrics, which she hadn't done before, and she was really proud of them. Part of her appeal is her insecurity, because we can all relate to that.'

It is true that there is an unintimidating quality to Cole's beauty, a sense that she is not entirely sure of herself, even now. Regular Cole-watchers point out that during live performances, there is often a slight tremor to her voice when she starts singing as she tries to get her nerves under control.

We like our celebrities to struggle in public, to remind us that they are imperfect human beings, despite all appearances to the contrary. When a tabloid newspaper revealed in January that Cole's husband of 18 months, footballer Ashley Cole, had cheated on her with a hairdresser, there was an outpouring of public support.

'She got the sympathy vote with her hubby playing away,' says Max Clifford. 'Ashley Cole comes across as arrogant, whereas Cheryl comes across as friendly, nice and natural and we like that quality in our stars. Simon Cowell clearly spotted that very early on and he's a good judge of character.'

When Cole eventually took the wayward Ashley back after an obligatory period of 'dramatic weight loss', it seemed an extraordinarily brave, mature - and some might say foolhardy - thing for her to do.

But Cole appears to possess a wisdom beyond her years. In the recently published Girls Aloud autobiography, Dreams That Glitter, she acknowledges that: 'People make mistakes, stuff happens [...] Ashley's a free spirit. I'm not his keeper. I believe in letting people live their lives and be free, so Ashley can have time with his friends when he wants, he can go out when he wants.

'I'm not the type of person to ring him and be like, "Where are you? Who are you with? What's happening? What time will you be in? Why haven't you answered your phone?"

'I've been that person in the past and I don't like it. I won't let anything change me and make me revert to being that type of girl, because it's not me.'

A friend who saw her in Los Angeles shortly after the revelations of her husband's infidelity says: 'Cheryl believes marriage is for life. She feels she has to give him another chance because she believes in the vows she took: for better or for worse.' (Originally, Cole had wanted to add in 'for fatter, for thinner' until Ashley told her to 'stop being ridiculous'.)

She is not a typical footballer's wife and it is not a role she particularly enjoys. When Cole went to Baden-Baden for the 2006 World Cup in Germany, she stayed in the same five-star hotel as the other wives and girlfriends, but was careful to cultivate a lower profile. Unlike the other Wags, Cole dressed casually in combat trousers, a baseball cap pulled low down over her forehead and was extremely polite to hotel staff. Occasionally, she had a discreet dinner with Victoria Beckham, perhaps the only other footballer's wife who can claim a similar level of independent fame.

But Cole has long been aware that there is a sell-by date to her own celebrity. Girls Aloud will not last forever and she has spoken publicly of her desire to have children. In the meantime, Cowell (who fondly calls his newest protegee 'the Kid') is reported to have offered Cole a 100 per cent pay rise to return for the next series of The X Factor Manufacturers of waterproof mascara the world over must fervently be hoping that she says yes.

The Cole lowdown

Born: 1983 in Newcastle. One of five children. Married to Chelsea and England footballer Ashley Cole.

Best of times: She was the first to be chosen for the band Girls Aloud on TV talent show Popstars: The Rivals in 2002. The girl band have gone on to become one of the most successful British pop groups of the decade with 19 consecutive top 10 singles and five platinum albums, one of which went to number 1. In June, she was announced as the new judge on The X Factor, replacing Sharon Osbourne, and has gone on to be widely praised by TV critics and the public alike for her role on the show.

Worst of times: In January 2003, Cole was involved in an altercation with a lavatory attendant in a club in Guildford and was subsequently charged with racially aggravated assault. She was found guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, but cleared of the racial element of the charge.

She says: 'The past year [2004] has been the best ever. I feel like I've got a fairy godmother watching over me.'

'Footballers' wives are just as bad as benefit scroungers. These women have nannies, they don't cook or clean and never do a day's work. What kind of aspiration is that?'

They say: 'Cheryl's strong, but she's also a softie and she doesn't realise how much people genuinely do love her.' Girls Aloud bandmate Kimberley Walsh