Cheryl Cole

Good evening lovely readers. Today I have spent my day doing not an awful lot. I did however, bake a cake. Yes you did read that right, I, Emma Jamieson, baked a cake. And after trying it I'm still alive to tell the tale. How brilliant is that! I need to work on its appearance as it looks a bit of a shambles, but taste-wise it was spot on. It was coconut and chocolate flavour, for those of you who were wondering! Anyway although a little off topic that story was infact relevant to this blog because seeing as I haven't done a lot today, I've had Tweetdeck open all day (a programme to use for twitter) and I've been keeping up to date with the old celeb goss, you know what it's like. Bit of heatworld, Perez, femail... anyway this evening there has been a lot of chat about a certain Ms Cole. You know the one who's jetted off to America and left us poor Brit's to face the X Factor without her. Gutted. Yeah her, she's in Cannes for the film festival and she's just rocked up in an absolutely stunning white dress. She looks amazing. So here I am writing a blog on her, why not hey!

Cheryl Cole (or Tweedy as she was known as back then) was born in 1983 and bought up in Newcastle with her family. I've only just worked out that this scarily only makes her 6 years older than me. Damn she's achieved a lot! She first became well known when she took part of Popstars: The Rivals. As a huge Davina McCall fan back then, I was glued to this series (she presented it) and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Although it's fair to say I wasn't that keen on ol' Chez back then, because to be honest she came across as a bit of a pikey. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't great myself, rocking the playboy pencil case and the Von Dutch hats with Juicy Couture velour trackies isn't exactly elegant but I was young and naive.. ahem, anyway... She was chosen by the public nearly ten years ago in 2002 to be one fifth of the girl band: Girls Aloud. And she's been a household name ever since, but not always for the right reasons. Let's discuss further...

Girl's Aloud's very first single "Sound of the Underground" went straight in at number one which also nicely coincided with the Christmas number one for that year. Bonus! Later in 2003 rumours started to surface that Cheryl had allegedly hit a toilet attendant in a nightclub in Guildford. It was said to have been a "racial attack." Naughty! Because of this, Cheryl had to do a total of 20 hours unpaid community service and was ordered to give the toilet attendant £500 (mere pocket money to her!) Just a year later in 2004 Cheryl started dating Ashley Cole. Dickhead. Ahem. They announced their engagement just a year later in 2005 whilst away on holiday in Dubai, very nice! They went on to get married in July 2006 which was obviously featured on OK! magazine like the majority of celebrity weddings do nowadays as they sold the rights to their pictures for a rumoured £1 million. In the pictures it looked like the perfect dream fairytale wedding, and it may well have been, but the marriage was far from a fairytale..

In 2008, just two years after they wed, several stories started to emerge from several different girls about an allegedly unfaithful Ashley. Cheryl's wedding ring came off as the couple took a break. Later on in the same year Cheryl took Sharon's place on the X Factor and in her very first year of being a mentor she had helped Alexandra Burke on her way to winning the show. Cheryl was rapidly becoming a national sweetheart, many felt sorry for her after the whole Ashley saga, however when the wedding ring was seen back on her finger in 2009 and it was publically revealed that Ashley and Cheryl were back together many lost the respect they had once had for the strong, independent Cheryl. I, personally, didn't. She obviously meant it when she took her wedding vows (unlike him) and wanted her marriage to work so gave it another shot. Although I wasn't naive enough to believe that Ashley would change I thought it was good for her for trying.

The same year she started work on solo stuff with people such as Will.I.Am. Cheryl had featured in his song and video for Heartbreaker and the pair have worked well together ever since. Her first solo single was titled Fight For This Love (a subtle choice after the year she'd had, I think you'll agree!) and it sold 134,000 copies in one day alone! It subsequently went straight to number 1 - no surprises there! She also found time to walk up Mount. Kilimanjaro along other celebrities for Comic Relief. Their trek raised an amazing £3.4 million for the deserving charity. And at the end of 2009 Cheryl returned to the X Factor for the second year running and once again was the winning mentor but this year with a boy - Joe McElderry. This year she was noticed for wearing particularly extravagant and bizarre outfits throughout the competition which got everyong talking and often made the headlines more than the actual contestants!

A year on and 2010 arrives and once again Cheryl isn't off the front pages of magazines or newspapers for long. In early February another string of girls come forward (5 to be exact) with pictures, about affairs they'd been having with Ashley. Cheryl moves out of their home and the wedding ring comes off again. During this whole saga she performed at the Brits (I bet she wished she'd chosen a different song as her debut single instead of Fight for this Love!) On 23rd February Cheryl announced that she would be spliting from Ashley, her husband of nearly 4 years. Later in May she filed for divorce citing "unreasonable behaviour" of her estranged husband as the reason for their public break-ip. Late the same day her PR company confirmed the divorce, posting a message on Twitter stating: "We can confirm the divorce. We have no further comment." I remember seeing that tweet and feeling gutted for her, she had obviously wanted to make her marriage work, but people aren't there to be changed, no matter how much you want them to. They were divorced in September. She has since continued to used the surname Cole, and in October 2010 in an interview with Th e Guardian she explained her controversial decision by saying she would continue to use her married name, because changing it back would make her seem "ashamed" of her marriage.

In July 2010, not one to stay away from some drama, Cheryl once again made the headlines, but this time because she had contracted Malaria. (Or so that's what we've been told... hmm!) Anyway after a short trip away to Tanzania with Derek Hough (not overly sure what's going on there..) During an X Factor audition Cheryl complained about feeling weak, almost like she had the flu. The following day during a photo shoot she collapsed and was taken to hospital where she stayed for several weeks and it was very touch and go for a bit. After recovering she returned to the X Factor for the judges houses and the live shows. She also released her second album "Messy Little Raindrops" along with a few more solo singles including "The Promise." She also famously went on Piers Morgan's Life Stories where she spoke for the first time about the Ashley situation and shed a few tears doing so. It made for emotional watching.

It was announced just under 2 weeks ago that Cheryl has been chosen as one of the new judges for USA X Factor and has now swanned off to crack America by doing so, leaving us Brits not only without Simon but Cheryl as well (the only reason I'll be watching X Fac this year is for Derm!) Not only that but she has she had twenty consecutive top 10 singles (including 4 number 1s) with Girls Aloud, as well as 5 albums with the four other girls, two number 1 solo singles and two number 1 solo albums, received five BRIT award nominations, appeared on numerous glossy magazine front covers such as Vogue and Elle, completed 3 series of the UK X Factor and contributed to Girl's Aloud's book "All that Glitters" but amongst all of this she has also managed to squeeze in being the face of L'Oreal, endorsing companies such as Barbie, Nintendo DS and KitKat. Crickey!

And here I am tonight, writing this blog simply because I saw a picture of her on the red carpet in Cannes and I thought she looked incredible. Simply perfect. She really has come a long way from the chavvy looking 19 year old we saw on our tv screens back in 2002. Cheryl is one of the most beautiful and talked-about celebrities of recent times, and who can blame us for talking about her, she's been through quite a lot in the last ten years hasn't she! But with all these stories comes many strong opinions that people have of her. I for one, have always been very pro Team Cheryl. I don't have a bad word to say about her, yeah some of her outfit choices for X Factor have been lets say "interesting" but she's pulled them all off, and for me she can do no wrong (just like Britney and VB.) But, love her or loathe her, you've got to hand it to her, having been bought up on a council estate from Newcastle, she's totally turned her life around and is now one of the most well known and sought after women in the world. She's done al-bloody-right for herself hasn't she.

Good on ya pet!