Cole - Cheryl: my story

Keep Calm and Soldier On.

Contents

Can I have your autograph and a picture?

I was totally stunned. Was this person really here, asking me to sign my name and pose for a photo?

Well can I?

The woman was staring at me hopefully, holding a camera up and pushing a bit of paper towards me.

No, absolutely not, I stuttered. I was flabbergasted. Disgusted, actually.

This wasnt a fan at a Girls Aloud concert or someone waiting outside the X Factor studios. The woman was a cleaner at the London Clinic where I was being treated for malaria.

Id literally nearly died just days before, and now I was lying in bed looking and feeling so weak and ill, and trying to get my head around what the hell had happened to me. The cleaner stuffed the camera in her apron pocket and looked quite put out, as if Id turned down a perfectly reasonable request.

Derek was horrified, and he leapt up and showed her the door. Hes one of the most kind and sensitive and gentlemanly men I have ever met, but I swear from the look in his eyes he wanted to kill that woman.

I stared at Derek in disbelief. How had my personal life got so tangled up with my job and my fame that other people no longer treated me like a human being?

Am I going to die? Id asked a nurse on my first day in intensive care. There was a pause before she told me plainly: Theres a possibility.

Her words didnt shock me. I was so exhausted that I actually felt relieved. If I am dying, just hurry up and make it happen, I thought. Im too tired. For Gods sake, make this end.

I spent four days in intensive care at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases and was now out of danger, but I was still very ill. My body felt incredibly weak and Id been drifting in and out of sleep and consciousness for days. My head was heavy and foggy and it was so uncomfortable even just to lie down.

Ive survived, I thought in the moments after the cleaner was shown out of the room.

But whats happened to me? Who am I?

Being in hospital is hell. All you can do is lie there and think. I couldnt walk. I was stuck in bed with machines bleeping all around me, trying to make sense of how and why I was here, and what my life had become.

My life was crazy, and it had been that way for a long time. The way the cleaner treated me was just the latest proof of how mad it was. She didnt stop to think that I was a living, breathing woman who had been at deaths door. Id been asked for pictures at inappropriate moments many times before, but this one topped the lot in terms of cheek and weirdness.

I shut my eyes and thought back to earlier that day, when Id been taken for a lung scan. I was dressed in a hospital gown and I had filthy hair that was so greasy it looked like I was wearing a cap with long pieces of hair sticking out from under it. I hadnt showered or been out of bed for a week and my face was yellow with jaundice, but in that moment I didnt care. It was just amazing to be on the move instead of lying in bed, attached to tubes and machines. As I was wheeled down the corridor I could feel the air blowing through all the hair that wasnt stuck to my head. I honestly felt like a girl in a shampoo advert, wafting my hair about in the breeze.

All of a sudden a little girl pointed at me excitedly.

I swear thats Cheryl Cole!

Her words changed my mood in a heartbeat. As soon as she spoke I didnt feel free any more. I felt exposed and extremely uncomfortable.

Take me back to me room, please , I immediately said to the nurse.

I was so taken aback that Id been recognised, in here. The hospital should have been a haven for me, but it wasnt. I didnt even look like me, yet the girl still recognised me and she must have been poorly too. I felt mortified. I had no privacy, absolutely nowhere to hide. Thats how I felt.

In hindsight I can see the funny side of that story and I dont blame the young girl for reacting the way she did. I was in a very dark place then, though, and I just couldnt see any light at all. When the cleaner asked for my autograph and a picture not long afterwards, it was like a light going on.

I had grown up wanting to be a pop star, but I had never anticipated this level of fame. Nobody could have prepared me for this. Id followed my childhood dream and Id achieved it, and so much more. I should have been happy, but I felt like my life was not my own at all, on any level, not even when I was recovering from a serious illness. It was out of my control, and as I lay in my hospital bed I could see that I had to make changes, or I would end up going completely crazy.

Its more than two years since I had malaria, and now I feel sure I had it for a reason. Its almost as if it was Gods way of forcing me to stop and get off the rollercoaster ride my life had become. It made me take a good look at myself, and that is what I have done.

Its only very recently that Ive felt strong enough to talk about whats gone on in my life, and to start to put things in perspective.

I actually feel grateful for everything thats happened, the good and the bad, because my life has been amazingly colourful and eventful. Incredible, in fact. Now I finally feel ready, and strong enough, to open up my heart and tell you all about it.

Follow your dreams, Cheryl

If anyone had asked me to describe my life when I was a little girl growing up in Newcastle, this is what I would have told them:

Im seven. We live in a massive house in Byker. Little Garry sleeps in with me mam and dad, I share a room with our Gillian and Andrew, and we all have bunks. Joe, whos our big brother, has a room all to himself. Hes a big teenager, seven years older than me, and so I hardly ever see him. One Christmas, me and Gillian definitely seen Santa though, and at Halloween we definitely seen a witch. I like magical things, and the Chronicles of Narnia is one of me favourite TV programmes. Me dad plays the keyboard and is always sayin to me: Go on, Cheryl, Ill play something and you make up the words. Me Nana made a tape of me when I was three. She wrote on it: Little Cheryl Singing and I was so proud. Top of the Pops is always on the TV and I tell me dad: Im gonna be on there when Im bigger!

Cheryl, sweetheart, he says. Youll need to get a proper job when you get big! He works really hard as a painter and decorator and me mam stays home and looks after all us kids. She tells me, Follow your dreams, Cheryl. Do what your heart tells you. Me mams very soft and gentle but she tells me Im too soft!

That guys just punched him senseless! I heard me dad say one night when he was watching a boxing match on the telly. I cried all night long, thinking to meself, Whens that poor man gonna get his sense back? Honest to God, Cheryl, you need to toughen up, me mam said.

Gillians four years older and Andrew is three years older than me. Everyone says theyre like two peas in a pod, so close in age theyre like twins. I was four when our Garry was born and hes the baby of the family. Me, Gillian and Andrew like playing fish and chip shops in the back garden. We use big dock leaves for the fish, me dads white paint is the batter and the long grass is the chips. Andrews always telling us daft stories that cant be true and making us laugh. Me and Gillian make up dance routines and pretend were in Grease or Dirty Dancing , but Gillians a proper tomboy. She went to disco dancing classes once but didnt like them at all. I absolutely love dancing. I do it all; ballet, modern, jazz and ballroom after school, and on the weekend. Ive done it since I was three and Ive been in shows and pantos and all that. Show us your dancing, Cheryl, everyone always says, and so I do, all the time. I love it.