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I was told to keep eating to save my life, says Cheryl Cole
Doctors ordered Cheryl Cole to stop exercising and put on weight after the health scare that almost killed her.
And the svelte star – who was given just 24 hours to live at one point after contracting malaria last year – had no choice but to obey them to beat the illness.
‘I just ate everything,’ she said.
Miss Cole, 28, revealed how being ill had changed her priorities. ‘It opened my eyes to health and things I hadn’t focused on before,’ she said.
‘It’s now less about work, work, work and more about making time to chill and be with my friends and family.’
Miss Cole, who caught malaria while on holiday in Tanzania with American dancer Derek Hough in June 2010, is currently single after a reconciliation with her former husband, footballer Ashley Cole, 30, petered out.
After her recovery from the disease, she went to America as one of the judges on The X Factor U.S.A.
At the press launch, she showed off her fuller figure, but was then fired after just four days of filming on the show.
Since then, she has returned to her trimmer self and has kept a relatively low profile, splitting her time between the U.S. and UK working on her music.
She also had a cameo role in the film What To Expect When You’re Expecting with Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lopez.
Speaking in the new issue of InStyle magazine, which goes on sale on Thursday, the Girls Aloud singer also revealed she had once enjoyed a drink with Amy Winehouse, who died in July.
But she admitted: ‘I’m awful at drinking. Don’t get us [sic] wrong, though – I like a drink if it’s a night out.’
Miss Cole also told of her fascination with tattoos, saying that ‘to me, it’s art’.
She has at least seven tattoos.
To read the full feature, see the December issue of InStyle on sale Thursday or visit InStyle.co.uk.
New Nadine interview and photoshoot in this week’s OK! Magazine
AFTER splitting from her fiance Jason Bell, Nadine Coyle proves that she is still as strong as ever.
Speaking exclusively to OK! Nadine talks about her broken engagement, moving to New York and reuniting with Girls Aloud.
When talking about her move across the pond, the star says it’s “just for a change. I usually come two or three times a year, but this time it sucked me in right away!
“I first starting coming here when I was 19 and I was still in the band. I thought this place is amazing, so different and it has a lot of things I like.”
Despite her recent break-up with fiance and American Football player Jason Bell, the star says they are still close and explains to us why it ended.
Nadine says: “I’m not in a place right now where i feel like I can walk down the aisle. I still feel I want a bit more me-time before i can fully commit to getting married. I’m not a million years from it, but just not this year.”
The star also opens up about reuniting with Girls Aloud, explaining: “No set details, but it’s been almost ten years for Girls Aloud and our fans have been so supportive and wonderful.
“We will definitely be doing something for them.”
You can read the full interview with Nadine in this week’s OK!
Girls Aloud have achieved huge success in the U.K., outselling every other girl group in history, but they remain a virtual mystery in the U.S., where only a few vagrant hits have strayed onto chancier dance floors. Then there’s Nicola Roberts, the ice-skinned and flame-haired Aloud member: known simultaneously as the most polarizing and mystifying fifth of the group, she’s become this decade’s ultimate British cult pop star (in a nation that prides itself on producing oddball glamor). Upon their hiatus in 2009, figurehead Cheryl Cole went onto to become an X Factor judge, boilerplate solo pop queen and national tabloid treasure. Meanwhile, Roberts kept a low profile, working on what would become her just-released debut solo record, Cinderella’s Eyes.
Produced by avant-pop heavy hitters like Joseph Mount of Metronomy, Diplo, Dimitri Tikovoi, Dragonette, it’s a maverick commercial pop release in line with Roberts’ work in Girls Aloud. A Top 20 success on the U.K. charts, Cinderella’s Eyes is also well-reviewed by critics stateside. Like Roisin Murphy and Robyn before her, she seems destined to become one of international pop’s dark horses.
Outside of music, she’s also thriving. Her striking physical appearance — which once made her a target of playground hecklers and media abuse — is now hailed by the fashion community as inspiring, her arctic doll-like appearance setting her apart from the tanned and blonde Stepford wives of pop. Fortunately, Roberts’ own confidence with her looks has grown, too; she’s creeping onto fashion icon turf, with designers chasing her down and her Cinderella’s Eyes artwork displaying her as queen of her own hyperstylized fantasia. Rolling Stone talked with Roberts in London.
What were your priorities in making a solo record?
I didn’t want to be swamped down with the so-called dos and don’ts of how to make a pop record. I wanted everything to come through what I felt or what I wanted to create. Electro, as a style, can really give you that. Coming from working with [Aloud producers] Xenomania, I got used to the idea of breaking pop rules, so I continued with that in my solo experience. There are some vocal surprises on this record; not for me, but maybe for my listeners who never heard my full range before. There are some crazy falsettos on there; the vocals are erratic, which I wanted. It mirrors the emotion I felt when singing it; I let it go there. This record is about that: giving in, letting go, pushing things to the edge.
How did you choose your collaborators?
I wanted to make a unique record, and I knew who to choose based on the sounds they could give me. That came from listening to plenty of music on my own. The dramatic, intense electro sounds came from Joseph of Metronomy; I’d been a massive fan of his work and he liked the Aloud, and I knew he was more than capable of imagining and creating a record with me. For what eventually became my first single, “Beat of My Drum,” I could already hear it forming in my head — I could hear the sounds play out, I just couldn’t relay them. Being a fan of M.I.A. and Major Lazer’s “Pon De Floor,” I turned to Diplo and he made it a reality.
You shot your first two videos for “Beat of My Drum” and “Lucky Day” in New York and LA. What did you take away from the experience?
I hadn’t been to New York before. I find Americans to be a lot more open as people. They smile, they genuinely seem like they want to help you if you need something; they’re warm people. In London, it’s so busy, busy; I feel everyone is on their own track, and just trying to get to where they need to be. Apart from the hot weather, the American experience was great for me!
Don’t let the punk-princess look fool you – Kimberley Walsh is the sweetest and most sorted in Girls Aloud. She’s also the most candid…
Fierce and super-sexy in skin-tight shorts and a corset top, today’s punked-up Kimberley Walsh has never looked hotter. Those hourglass curves honed by punishing gym sessions in preparation for her West End role as Princess Fiona in Shrek The Musical, are perfectly exhibited in PVC – something not normally seen in Kimberley’s wardrobe.
“I’m loving this look,” she laughs. “It’s really glam, really out there. I feel great.”
But as good as she looks, Kimberley’s appeal has always really been about something else. It’s more about the way she smiles all the time, chats easily in that Yorkshire accent, watches Corrie, can tell you the price of a bag of Maltesers, and talks proudly about her BFF, Cheryl Cole (even revealing their secret shared passion for baking: “We absolutely love it. Cheryl does the best banana loaf and I am the scone queen.”)
Of all the Girls Aloud ladies, Kimberley, 29, is the one you’d most want to hang out with. She doesn’t do diva and she doesn’t do personal dramas. While her bandmates – Cheryl, Sarah Harding, Nicola Roberts and Nadine Coyle – hit headlines non-stop with their man issues, Kimberley has remained firmly attached to ex-boy-band singer, Justin Scott, 29, who she met eight years ago when he was in Triple 8.
Nicola Roberts is eager to meet with education officials in the U.K. to discuss bullying in schools in a bid to help fans who have tweeted her about their teen tormentors.
The Girls Aloud singer was taunted in the early days of her career for her pale skin and ginger hair, and has opened up about her ordeal in new song Sticks And Stones.
The 25 year old feels Twitter.com has helped highlight bullying issues in society – and now she wants to see more done to help victims.
Speaking on Bbc programme This Week, she says, “It’s so out of control. Society is very quick to judge these days. One of the good things about Twitter, is it sort of highlights the severity of the problem. Constantly, I’ve found with tweets, talking about people’s personal situations, whether it’s at school, being scared to go to school, people being scared to go to work even, people in the workplace.
“It really angers me and I don’t like to think there are people out there that really feel not great about themselves. I don’t think anybody is in a position to make somebody else feel that way about themselves, it really annoys me.
“It’s about ego and position. I would really just say (to victims) you have to turn it around and you can’t admire the people who are able to say nasty things so frivolously. It’s not admirable. Effectively you are the nicer person and you should hold on to that.”
And Roberts is keen to discuss bullying in school with education chiefs in her native Britain.
She adds, “In schools now it’s so out of control, I’d really like to speak to somebody. There needs to be more of a support system. I get tweets every day: ‘I’m terrified to go to school’. You’re helpless, it’s really hard.”
Sarah Harding is ‘excited and scared’ about next chapter
Sarah Harding is “excited and scared” about her life since splitting from her fiance.
The Girls Aloud star separated from DJ Tom Crane earlier this month after dating him since 2007 and although she admits she is uncertain about her future she is still remaining positive.
When asked how she is feeling about her life at the moment and her approaching 30th birthday, Sarah said: “I’m excited, scared … I’m ready to take another leap. I’m entering a whole new chapter and it’s scary. Hopefully the best is yet to come. I feel a little more at ease with what’s going on in my life. I know where my career’s at. I know what I want out of life.”
The sexy star is keen to pursue other projects away from singing, and is hoping to do more acting following her roles in the two ‘St. Trinian’s’ movies.
Sarah – who is reuniting with her Girls Aloud bandmates for their 10th anniversary next year – added in an interview with LOOK magazine: “I’m just going to carry on as normal, doing what I do. I love to perform and entertain whether that’s acting, singing or modelling. I nearly did ‘X-Men’. I got called back three times but January Jones got the role. I don’t know if I would have been ready for it.”
Sarah and Tom reportedly split because of their arguments over having a long-distance relationship. The DJ spent most of the summer in Ibiza working, while the singer stayed at her home in Buckinghamshire, South East England.
NICOLA Roberts admits she fell ill with the stress of making her debut album.
The self-confessed “perfectionist” spent 18 months painstakingly plugging away at Cinderella’s Eyes because she refused to settle for anything less than the best.
Finally, she succumbed to a nasty cold after several sleepless and frustrating nights working with producer Dimitri Tikovi on first single Beat Of My Drum.
The Girls Aloud star – who performed new tunes Lucky Day and Sticks + Stones at her Biz Session – said: “We literally had about five days until the deadline of whether it was gonna be first single or not and I couldn’t get the production right.
“I could hear it in my head but I couldn’t do it. Me and Dimitri were in the studio and we were making ourselves ill – we might as well just have slept there.
“We were searching for this sound and we tried everything. We were putting these voices down and then f****** them up with the effects, and then playing some hooks and then f****** them up.
“It just wouldn’t work. It got to the point where I came down with a cold and I was like, ‘I’m making myself ill.’ I’ve never felt stress like the stress I felt making this record.
“Then I said, ‘I know who can do this. I really want Diplo to come on board.’
“As soon as I explained to Diplo what I wanted, he just got it straight away. It came back the way I wanted it to be and the way I heard it in my head.”
The hands-on singer also revealed she locked horns with her producers whenever they altered the sound of a track without her permission.
