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Backlash: Cheryl Cole could seek her revenge on Simon Cowell in her own tell-all book, which she has finally agreed to write
A divinely pretty young woman with an enormous collection of shoes is perched in the kitchen of a large rented house in the suburbs of North London, tap-tap-tapping at a keyboard.
Cheryl Cole, 28, has no male companion — but she is never alone. Her mother Joan lives with her in this smart corner of town, and her PA Lily England is also a constant companion.
Frequent visitors include her PR man Sundraj Sreenivasan and her trusted hair stylist Lisa Laudat, who has been with her since her early days of fame in cheesy pop band Girls Aloud.
Brother Garry, apparently also on the payroll, completes the team in an unspecified role.
The talk is mostly of clothes, fashion accessories and her Twitter followers.
Everyone knows it is best not to mention Simon Cowell, whom Cheryl thinks is a 'creep' and 'the last man on earth' she would ever sleep with — especially after the new book by journalist Tom Bower, which revealed Cowell's particularly unpleasant attitude towards women.
But the bigger picture is that Cheryl and her team are plotting her comeback — and she is planning to use Cowell for her own ends, just as ruthlessly as she believes he used her.
In the coming months, she will release a single and a video, followed by a shoe collection, a tell-all autobiography, a calendar, a slew of tickets to see her in concert, more tickets to see Girls Aloud reunite and a single with her former bandmates.
Her fans, whom she refers to as 'soldiers', have been gasping for Cheryl merchandise; now they will have a chance to fill their boots.
Notwithstanding the ardour of her committed followers, the jury is out as to whether her relaunch has much of a chance of success.
The best of friends: Cheryl Cole and Simon Cowell formed a formidable partnership on the X-Factor but she says she feels degraded by comments in his biography
Her single Call My Name is not much heard on the radio, despite a collaboration with DJ Calvin Harris and as much hype as she could muster.
She will need to be selected for radio playlists to have a chance of getting into the charts.
However, her manager, TV's The Voice coach Will.i.am, is convinced that her third solo album will be such a success that it will finally earn her recognition in America, where she remains an unknown. We shall see.
The ambition will certainly be aided by the publicity that will attend the publication of her autobiography in November.
After resisting the idea for years, Cheryl has agreed a deal with Harper Collins to write the full story of her life so far. It promises to be what the Geordie lass might call a 'reet rivetin' read.
In return for an enormous advance of 350,000, she has started to pour out her thoughts to ghost-writer Rebecca Cripps.
Miss Cripps was the poor soul charged with producing Spice World magazine in the late Nineties — transforming the incoherent thoughts of five exuberant young women into a monthly Smash Hits-style magazine.
She went on to ghost Victoria Beckham's mega-selling autobiography Learning To Fly — a rather elegantly written tome that didn't contain any revelations, as such, but certainly burnished Victoria's image no end.
But though Miss Cripps' bosses are impressed at her knack of imbuing her subjects with depth, anyone who listened to Cheryl during an interview with DJ Chris Moyles on BBC Radio 1 this week will realise she has her work cut out.
Cat and mouse: Cheryl Cole and Simon Cowell still appear to be the best of friends during the National Television Awards last year
For Cheryl, famous since 2002, has long since perfected the art of saying nothing. She was on the cover of Marie Claire earlier this year, saying nothing of interest, and managed the same trick again at Radio 1 this week.
Asked who told her she had been dumped off The X Factor USA, she simply changed the subject: 'I have enjoyed this past year making a record and having time to do that.'
Despite bizarre reports that she's planning to use an alias on a dating website to find new love, she insisted she doesn't have time for romance.
'I'm not interested right now,' she said. 'I haven't got time with the new album.' And her thoughts on Simon? 'We're 'frenemies'... I've spoken to him many times since. If you're asking if there were interesting conversations — absolutely.'
So what is the truth about Cheryl and Simon, The X Factor and her former husband, footballer Ashley Cole? And what is she likely to say in print?
Not a sex object: Cheryl Cole is angry about comments made in Simon Cowell's biography that suggested he lusted after her
One in her circle says that Cheryl has plenty to say on all of those topics, and she is desperate to stop being so bland and to unleash her inner battling Geordie princess.
After all, let's not forget Cheryl was convicted of assault in 2003 after a late-night scrap with a nightclub toilet attendant, which left her victim with a black eye. She has quite a temper, then, and plenty of appetite for a fight.
'She is doing the book and loving it,' I am told. 'She will never be vulgar, and it won't be a kiss and tell, but she is very keen to get her side of the story over. She's enjoying it.'
First, Simon. His recent comments about being 'obsessed' with Cheryl gave her cause to shudder.
'I felt like a mouse being played with by a beautiful cat. I adored her,' Cowell told author Tom Bower.
She was also extremely angry at the implication he had given her the job on The X Factor only because he fancied her.
Words such as 'degraded' and 'objectified' are being tossed around by some in Cheryl's group.
'She's not happy that he portrayed her as some kind of sex object. It actually disgusts her,' said a friend.
The suggestion that she manipulated him, with fluttering eyes and soulful glances, is dismissed with a snort. In fact, Cheryl never thought Cowell fancied her; she always just believed he was in love with himself.
She regarded him as a friend and confidant.
But she is coming to see Simon's role as her mentor in a new light. He was, she will reveal in the book, one of many who advised her to dump Cole after the 'sexting' scandal.
Cole was caught out sending naked pictures of himself to topless model Sonia Wild in 2010. Initially, he denied that it was him. It then emerged that he had sneaked another woman, Vicki Gough, into his hotel for sex.
Indeed, Cheryl will say in the book that Cowell handed her the name and number of a respected divorce lawyer at the height of the crisis, and told her she needed to 'get smart' and 'protect herself'.
What's less known is that, as the marriage crumbled under the stress of two competing sets of professional commitments, Cowell repeatedly insisted she put her career first.
It's fair to say that she now wonders what his motivation was. Ashley is said to think that, if it wasn't for Simon, they might still be together.
Reunion: British group Girls Aloud, made up of Nadine Coyle, Kimberly Walsh, Sarah Harding, Nicola Roberts and Cheryl Cole are expected to reunite this year
Similarly, Cheryl looks back with rancour at Cowell's dislike for dancer Derek Hough, who was briefly a shoulder for her to cry on.
Cowell repeatedly advised her to ditch him, saying the toothy blonde Mormon dancer was bad for her image. He was dismayed when she got into the habit of flying off to LA to spend time with Hough, and made no secret of it.
There was a particularly awkward dinner at Cowell's house, during which he told Hough he didn't think he was good for Cheryl.
And what about Ashley? What his ex-wife has to say about him will be a massive part of the book's appeal.
A song on her forthcoming album is dedicated to him with the title Screw You. As the title suggests, it is a robust dismissal of a faithless lover and observes that no sacrifice on the singer's part was enough for him.
Truth: Cheryl Cole is expected to reveal the full story behind her relationship with former husband and footballer Ashley Cole
But that seems to be just Cheryl getting a bit of anger out of her system — apparently, readers should not expect her to have harsh words for him.
Despite the numerous cheating scandals and the divorce, he is still very much a part of her life.
They remain in contact — with Cheryl shame-facedly admitting on Twitter that she got in touch with people who she should not when she'd had too much to drink. No prizes for guessing who.
They were, in fact, on the brink of going public as a couple again last June, and he was at her birthday party, where they were spotted 'canoodling' in a corner.
Unfortunately, at that time several other girls came forward to claim they, too, had been having heavy flirtations with the footballer. The Cheryl and Ashley romance was off the cards almost before it began.
They did meet up subsequently, spending a night smoking and playing pool at the Grove Hotel in Hertfordshire, and he never seems to be far from her mind.
'A part of me will always love Ashley,' Cheryl told Piers Morgan several years ago, and that much is true. Her mother Joan, I'm told, continues to fear the possibility that she will weaken and take Ashley back.
However, for the purposes of PR, she will be known simply as 'Cheryl' for all professional appearances.
Her people think this will give her an 'extra bit of spice', and claim it is a 'career statement?.?.?.?she's in a really good place.' In preparation for her relaunch a punishing fitness regime has seen her running on a treadmill and doing hundreds of sit-ups daily.
Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna's fitness guru Tracy Anderson has given her a 30-day programme to work out her legs — and she has been showing them off in tiny shorts.
There is a sense of new beginnings. She is about to move into a new North London home and is certainly the first among equals when it comes to Girls Aloud, who are having to fit their reunion plans around her schedule.
It's fair to say Cheryl can almost taste the payback which she is about to send Simon Cowell's way. No wonder the former Mrs Cole, who was out this week wearing dark glasses and hotpants in a rainstorm, feels as if the outlook is very sunny indeed.
Wow did she lern readin n writin......
- Keith Sutton-Jones, Darlington Co.Durham, 28/4/2012 02:52
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