door. I’d been asked for pictures at inappropriate moments many times before, but this one topped the lot in terms of cheek and weirdness.
I shut my eyes and thought back to earlier that day, when I’d been taken for a lung scan. I was dressed in a hospital gown and I had filthy hair that was so greasy it looked like I was wearing a cap with long pieces of hair sticking out from under it. I hadn’t showered or been out of bed for a week and my face was yellow with jaundice, but in that moment I didn’t care. It was just amazing to be on the move instead of lying in bed, attached to tubes and machines. As I was wheeled down the corridor I could feel the air blowing through all the hair that wasn’t stuck to my head. I honestly felt like a girl in a shampoo advert, wafting my hair about in the breeze.
All of a sudden a little girl pointed at me excitedly.
‘I swear that’s Cheryl Cole!’
Her words changed my mood in a heartbeat. As soon as she spoke I didn’t feel free any more. I felt exposed and extremely uncomfortable.
‘Take me back to me room, please,’ I immediately said to the nurse.
I was so taken aback that I’d been recognised, in here. The hospital should have been a haven for me, but it wasn’t. I didn’t even look like me, yet the girl still recognised me and she must have been poorly too. I felt mortified. I had no privacy, absolutely nowhere to hide. That’s how I felt.
In hindsight I can see the funny side of that story and I don’t blame the young girl for reacting the way she did. I was in a very dark place then, though, and I just couldn’t see any light at all. When the cleaner asked for my autograph and a picture not long afterwards, it was like a light going on.
I had grown up wanting to be a pop star, but I had never anticipated this level of fame. Nobody could have prepared me for this. I’d followed my childhood dream and I’d achieved it, and so much more. I should have been happy, but I felt like my life was not my own at all, on any level, not even when I was recovering from a serious illness. It was out of my control, and as I lay in my hospital bed I could see that I had to make changes, or I would end up going completely crazy.
It’s more than two years since I had malaria, and now I feel sure I had it for a reason. It’s almost as if it was God’s way of forcing me to stop and get off the rollercoaster ride my life had become. It made me take a good look at myself, and that is what I have done.
It’s only very recently that I’ve felt strong enough to talk about what’s gone on in my life, and to start to put things in perspective.
I actually feel grateful for everything that’s happened, the good and the bad, because my life has been amazingly colourful and eventful. Incredible, in fact. Now I finally feel ready, and strong enough, to open up my heart and tell you all about it.
1 ‘Follow your dreams, Cheryl’
If anyone had asked me to describe my life when I was a little girl growing up in Newcastle, this is what I would have told them:
I’m seven. We live in a massive house in Byker. Little Garry sleeps in with me mam and dad, I share a room with our Gillian and Andrew, and we all have bunks. Joe, who’s our big brother, has a room all to himself. He’s a big teenager, seven years older than me, and so I hardly ever see him. One Christmas, me and Gillian definitely seen Santa though, and at Halloween we definitely seen a witch. I like magical things, and the Chronicles of Narnia is one of me favourite TV programmes. Me dad plays the keyboard and is always sayin’ to me: ‘Go on, Cheryl, I’ll play something and you make up the words.’ Me Nana made a tape of me when I was three. She wrote on it: ‘Little Cheryl Singing’ – and I was so proud. Top of the Pops is always on the TV and I tell me dad: ‘I’m gonna be on there when I’m bigger!’
‘Cheryl, sweetheart,’ he says. ‘You’ll need to get a proper job when you get big!’ He works really hard as a painter and decorator and me mam stays home and looks after all us kids. She tells me, ‘Follow your dreams, Cheryl. Do what your heart tells you.’ Me mam’s very soft and gentle but she tells me I’m too soft!
‘That guy’s just punched him senseless!’ I heard me dad say one night when he was watching a boxing match on the telly. I cried all night long, thinking to meself, ‘When’s that poor man gonna get his sense back?’ ‘Honest to God, Cheryl, you need to toughen up,’ me mam said.
Gillian’s four years older and Andrew is three years older than me. Everyone says they’re like two peas in a pod, so close in age they’re like twins. I was four when our Garry was born and he’s the baby of the family. Me, Gillian and Andrew like playing fish and chip shops in the back garden. We use big dock leaves for the fish, me dad’s white paint is the batter and the long grass is the chips. Andrew’s always telling us daft stories that can’t be true and making us laugh. Me and Gillian make up dance routines and pretend we’re in Grease or Dirty Dancing, but Gillian’s a proper tomboy. She went to disco dancing classes once but didn’t like them at all. I absolutely love dancing. I do it all; ballet, modern, jazz and ballroom after school, and on the weekend. I’ve done it since I was three and I’ve been in shows and pantos and all that. ‘Show us your dancing, Cheryl,’ everyone always says, and so I do, all the time. I love it.
When I look back on my childhood through adult eyes I feel very grateful to my mam and dad for giving me such happy memories, especially as I know now that it wasn’t easy for them.
The ‘massive’ house I remember was in fact a really tiny, box-like council house that must have been really cramped with seven of us under the one roof. There wasn’t a lot of money, but as a little girl I never remember feeling poor. I always had Barbie dolls to play with and didn’t care that they were second-hand and out of fashion, and I always got presents I treasured at Christmas, like the one year when I got a sweet shop with little jars you could fill up. I absolutely loved it.
For our tea we ate food like beans on toast, corned beef hash or grilled Spam. A Chinese takeaway was a treat because we couldn’t afford it, but we were no different from anybody else on our estate. Mam would buy us things from catalogues and save up to pay the bill at the end of the month. I remember the end of August was always a nightmare because my mother had to get everyone kitted out with new uniforms and pencil cases, all at the same time. I could feel the tension in the house, but we always got through it. Sometimes we wore hand-me-down clothes, but that was completely normal. Neighbours and relatives passed things on; that’s what everybody did. Pride is a massive thing for Geordies and Mam made sure that, one way or another, we always looked presentable and we never went without.
I’ve had to ask my mam to fill me in on some of the details about my really early years, especially with all my dancing, as I was too young to remember a lot of it. I also thought it might be nice to give my mam, Joan, the chance to tell this part of the story herself, and this is what she told me when I started writing my book.
What Mam remembers …
One of me friends told me there was a local bonny baby competition and that I should enter you because you were such a pretty baby. You really were a pretty baby, with very dark hair and lots of it.
I happened to walk past Boots one day in the local shopping centre and saw the competition advertised. I thought, ‘why not?’, took you in for a picture and then forgot all about it … until I found out you’d won it. Family and friends encouraged me to enter you into other similar things. You won every time and eventually, through winning competitions, a model agency approached us and asked if they could take you on. ‘Why not?’ I thought again.
When you were about three years old one of me friends said, ‘Let’s take the kids to disco dancin’.’ She told me there was a class on opposite the Walker Gate metro station, run by a lady called Noreen Campbell. ‘Why not?’ I found meself saying yet again. You loved dancin’ at home. The boys did things like karate and trampolining but I tried to give you all a chance to do things I thought you’d enjoy, and I knew this was more your thing. When we got there