The pale and interesting Girls Alouder and style icon talks to Celebs On Sunday about finding her fashion groove, and getting the band back together (scream)…

We’ve long been members of Team Ginge. Because Nicola Roberts is a bit different from your average, formulaic pop star. Not intimidatingly beautiful, thus not sent to make us feel cacky about ourselves, she’s paler than a white-washed wall and proud of it.

Plus, since Girls Aloud went on their sabbatical, she’s made cool-as-owt solo music to please herself and not the charts (they all say that, but in Nicola’s case it’s true).

And now, she’s a judge on our fave fashion show Styled To Rock, in which a bunch of young upstarts compete to design an outfit for Rihanna to wear on stage, the final of which airs this week.

We’re sat in a pub in London’s Primrose Hill waiting for Nicola’s entrance, and we’re expecting big things. The Girls Alouder is a fully fledged fashionista these days, muse for her Styled To Rock judging mate, Henry Holland, and a regular on the front row at London Fashion Week.

But instead of some edgy, high-end appearance, we’re pleased to report the 27-year-old looks, well, refreshingly regular.

Nicola protests when we describe her as a style icon, although this is her being modest (but who would go, ‘Yes, I am in fact the most fashionable, best-dressed person in all the land’, to be fair?) and tells us she is in actual fact clad in head-to-toe stuff we could buy in the Arndale Centre – Asos jumper, jeans and boots from Topshop.

‘So I’m super high street today,’ she says, although she is wearing mahoosive rock star shades, so dark she almost sits on a non-existent bench she thinks she’s seen). ‘Oh, but my bag is Mulberry,’ she mutters.

We’re here to talk about the show, but there’s something else we want to know more. Which is when the blazes are the Best Girl Band In The World Ever getting back together?

‘Argh, I just want to say everything and I can’t…OK, um, what can I say? It’s sooner than you think,’ she says. ‘I can’t say anything else, but we are all super excited, and it’s gonna be good.’

The rumour mill suggests it will be early next year, so ‘sooner than we think’ sounds like later this year…

Our theory is they’ll do it to mark 10 years of fame, to coincide with the time they won their places in the band on Popstars: The Rivals. Nicola was the baby of the competition, barely out of school uniform and living in Runcorn, with no money.