In her television interview with Piers Morgan, Cheryl talked about the past year, her battle with malaria and her relationship with Ashley Cole. Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh provided support for Cheryl, sitting in the audience nearby.
Cheryl cried openly has she discussed her marriage to the footballer that broke apart after she discovered he was cheating on her. She revealed that she still spoke to him regularly despite the painful circumstances surrounding their divorce. ‘Once we get over this obstacle, I hope we can be friends again.’ She said, ‘A part of me will always love Ashley.’
Cheryl’s latest single, entitled Happy Tears, is rumoured to refer to Ashley with lyrics such as ‘I cried when I heard you were cheatin’/ I cried when I said I was leavin’/I cried when my heart stopped believin’/But I’m all out of tears.’ Cheryl did not write the song but she approved it, perhaps lyrics such as ‘I sold all the diamonds and burnt all your clothes’ struck a chord with the divorced singer.
Cheryl maintained that she still believed Cole was ‘a genuinely nice guy’ despite his cheating. ‘Looking back on it, I feel numb.’ She said, ‘We had a great marriage and a fantastic wedding day but I don’t know where it went wrong. To this day I still question that.’
The X-factor judge cried again as she spoke of her battle with malaria over the summer. The singer said that she had written a will after doctors had told her that it was possible she could die of the illness. She told Morgan, ‘I thought I was going to die, I actually thought I was going to die. I thought if I’m going to die I want to die soon because I was in so much pain’.
Cheryl confessed to missing being just a ‘regular girl’. ‘Sometimes I feel completely trapped,’ she said, ‘I just can’t go back to Newcastle and put on tracksuit bottoms and Ugg boots.’
The Geordie beauty may have been trying to get back to her roots as she sported a new red hair colour after using a £5.99 L’Oreal DIY hair colour kit. The model for L’Oreal spurned her expensive hairdresser and used a Casting Creme Gloss in shade #550 Mahogany to create her new look.
