Cheryl: My Story (37 page)

As for Cher, I absolutely loved her and had done from the start. She reminded me of myself, coming from a similar background and being gutsy, putting herself out there. She felt poorly at judges’ houses and basically broke down when it was her turn to sing, but I still put her through because I believed in her and I felt sure she’d blossom as the competition went on.

‘Don’t put her through,’ Simon said. There was a lot of talk behind the scenes about Cher’s health because she looked so frail, but I had a strong instinct that she was going to make it.

‘Trust me,’ I said. ‘I know how to navigate her through.’

‘On your head be it,’ Simon said, because he always had to have the last word.

Rebecca Ferguson was such a beautiful and enchanting singer I had to pick her despite the fact she was so shy, but I decided not to keep Gamu. I hadn’t been there for her first audition, but I’d met her behind the scenes and I saw what the cameras didn’t. I couldn’t see a spark in her eyes and I just didn’t get her, even though she was lovely and had a nice voice. I believed very strongly that the audience would vote her off in a couple of weeks, whereas my instinct on Cher’s potential was so strong, which is why I chose her over Gamu.

I was completely unprepared for the amount of outrage that decision caused. ‘Cheryl, it’s time to tell the truth,’ I saw splashed across a newspaper front page that flashed up on TV in my bedroom a few days later. It completely floored me. ‘What the hell?’ I said to the television. I couldn’t believe I’d apparently caused a national uproar just by doing my job on a television talent show. It was insane. Will had totally agreed with my choices and had picked exactly the same girls I had. We’d chosen the acts we believed could win the competition; it was that simple.

‘I can’t handle this. It’s just unbelievable! I’m not even completely well again.’

I honestly didn’t know anything at all about Gamu’s background when I decided not to take her any further in the competition. I had absolutely no idea she had an issue with her visa and was worried about deportation. All of that came to light afterwards, and yet now I was being accused of booting her off to get rid of the problem for ITV. It was horrific, absolutely mortifying.

I knew full well from past experience that once a story is out there it’s impossible to take it back, and giving an interview to the press to try and correct inaccuracies usually just fanned the flames.

Over the previous few weeks, Piers Morgan had been in touch to ask me to go on his
Life Stories
show. I liked Piers, but going on his show didn’t appeal to me at all. I couldn’t understand why anybody would want to be interviewed at length like that on national television, especially someone like me who was trying to stay
out
of the media spotlight. After the Gamu scandal, though, I suddenly saw it through new eyes.

‘You know what, I’m going to do it,’ I told Lily. ‘There’s nobody twisting your words on there. It’s just going to be me, on camera, speaking. I can set the record straight.’

Once I’d made the decision it felt liberating because it wasn’t just Gamu I would be talking about. My decree nisi had been granted the month before, while I was in LA, and the divorce would be finalised in a couple of weeks. I started to see the show as the perfect opportunity to say my final piece about the marriage, and to shut the door on all the speculation about it, once and for all.

I knew from friends that Ashley had been really bad lately. He’d been drinking a lot and his flat had been ransacked, and he was basically in a real mess. I didn’t feel hatred towards him. It was very painful to think of him like that, and I knew exactly what I wanted to say on television.

‘You have no idea what I’ve been through. I’m not celebrating the end of my marriage. I still have feelings for Ashley and I wish none of this had happened and I was still married to him. I feel at the end of my tether. I’ve been through a divorce and nearly died, all in the space of a few months. It’s too much for anyone to cope with, and I just want us both to be left alone to deal with it.’

That is what I had running through my mind as I prepared for the interview, but when the cameras started rolling it felt too difficult for me to say everything I wanted to. I did manage to tell Piers that Ashley had been my best friend, that a part of me would always love him and I was a heartbroken girl, but it was so hard to speak.

‘I wasn’t a footballer’s wife in an ivory tower with all the lovely things and so thinking it will all be alright,’ I managed to say.

My shoulders felt like cardboard I was so full of stress, and my chest was caving in. The amount of sadness I felt as I spoke was really overwhelming, and it shocked me. I started to cry, and when Piers went on to ask me about the nature of my friendship with Derek, I told him I was never going to talk about it, ever.

I said this because I’d made the mistake in the past of talking about my private life. Having my wedding in
OK!
magazine was the worst mistake of the lot. It made it impossible to ask for privacy afterwards, and now the marriage was over there was speculation all the time about who I might be dating.

‘I’ve got a magazine on asking if you’re going out with 50 Cent,’ Sundraj had said one day.

‘Well, I’m not. I met him once when I was 21.’

Another time it was: ‘Are you going out with Andre Merritt?’

‘Sundraj, I know he wrote “Fight For This Love” but I’ve never even met him.’

‘Er, I have someone asking if you’re going out with a billionaire who Derek introduced you to.’

‘No! I wish I was!’

‘What about your hairdresser? Any truth in that rumour?’

‘Sundraj, please! I was out with him and his boyfriend!’

I wanted all that rubbish to stop, and I knew that whatever I said about Derek would only increase the speculation, so I made that pledge never to speak about our relationship, or any other I may have in the future. I have stuck to that pledge, and I will always stick to it.

I honestly hoped that by doing Piers’ show I had said the final sentence, and I really thought I had.

Back on
The X Factor
I felt like an emotional wreck after the ordeal of talking to Piers, but I didn’t want anybody to know how fragile I was and so I put on a feisty front. When Simon said to me on the show one night, ‘I would like to start off by saying Cheryl, you look much better tonight – less orange,’ I felt like knocking his head off. My complexion was still a touchy subject after the malaria, but I didn’t want to say that and play the victim. ‘You too, and your teeth look whiter,’ I replied instead, to a gobsmacked Simon.

He loved it really when I answered him back like that, and we were actually getting on better than we ever had done. I’d told Piers that Simon was one of the most important people in my life, and it was true. Inviting me on
The X Factor
had changed my life and taught me so much on so many levels, and I was grateful to him and saw him as a friend as well as a colleague.

Sometimes I’d take Buster into the show with me, and Simon would go all gooey over him. For this series Simon had a whole floor converted into a huge dressing room. It looked like a really flash bachelor pad, with white leather sofas and black wood everywhere, and one time Buster did a wee on his floor. I’d had to stop taking Coco in because she did that all the time in my dressing room, but Simon just laughed about it.

That’s what it was like. One minute we’d be crossing swords, the next we’d be giggling together like a couple of naughty school kids. We often took a break together, running off down the corridor to sneak outside and have a cigarette. To me, Simon was exactly like an annoying but charming older brother, the type who winds you up and makes you want to scream sometimes, but you love him really. There was nothing sexual between us, and there never has been. Why he came out with that line in his book saying he would have liked an affair with me, I’ll never know.

‘I felt like a mouse being played by a beautiful cat,’ he apparently told Tom Bower, his unofficial biographer. ‘She would drop her eyes and play the soulful victim to get around me. She played me.’

Honest to God, I don’t recognise either the scenario, or Simon, there. I think he must have been going through some kind of mid-life crisis when he spoke to that guy. We sparked off each other and we ‘got’ each other, but there was never anything sexual going on between us. I never, ever felt like Simon was trying to hit on me, and despite what’s been written I have never called Simon ‘creepy’ for what he said about me, because as far as I’m concerned he is not creepy. He is just Simon, and I knew what he was like and how to handle him.

I laughed it off, and Simon texted me afterwards and said, ‘I’m so sorry if this has caused you any embarrassment, I didn’t write the book.’ He also told me that he meant it as a compliment that I ‘played’ him.

‘You’re saying I manipulated you?’ I asked, because I was genuinely confused. ‘What have I ever got you to do that you didn’t want to do?’

‘You had me wrapped round your little finger,’ Simon said. ‘Whatever you used to do to your eyes to make them big and wet …’

‘What? I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ I told him, and I still don’t.

I remember having a huge row with Simon one night, during the lives. Before we went on air he was really critical of Rebecca’s song choice. That stressed me out a lot, but when the cameras were on us he was all sweetness and light, as if the song choice had never been much of a problem at all.

‘It’s all a game to you, isn’t it, Simon?’

‘No, it’s business, Cheryl,’ he replied.

I was fuming with him, because I’d taken his criticism completely to heart. I understood that we needed to make ‘good TV’, but I hadn’t been so tainted by Simon that I lost sight of other peoples’ feelings. He, on the other hand, was quite happy to toy with me to get a good reaction for the show. I don’t think he once stopped to consider if I was emotionally strong enough to be doing this job, but looking back I definitely wasn’t.

There were terrible girl dramas going on all the time, and Cher in particular was always kicking off and needed a lot of attention. It was draining and I’d be in tears at some point each week, but Simon never spoke about feelings. With him it’s all about work, and if I was being feisty and tearful, it was good for ratings. I’m sure if he’d have known exactly how close to the edge I was he’d have been concerned, but I was obviously doing a very good job of hiding it.

‘We work so well together I’d love to have you in the US with me,’ Simon said one night.

It was November 2010. I knew some of the big bosses from Fox had been in the audience, watching how we did things over here. A couple of them had even been to my dressing room to meet me, and now I realised why. This was typical Simon. He’s the manipulator of all manipulators, and he’d obviously known about this possibility for a while and chosen to pull strings behind the scenes instead of being up front with me.

‘If you’re trying to get me on American
X Factor
, then do us a favour …’

‘What?’

‘Please will you be the one to tell me if I’m doing it or if I’m not. I know what you’re like, and I don’t want stuff all over the press before I know myself.’

‘Agreed.’

I wasn’t excited or nervous or anything at all, to tell the truth. I just thought I’d wait and see what happened.

Not long afterwards I got a phone call at home from Simon.

‘You know that conversation we had about American
X Factor
?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve got the job.’

I didn’t speak.

‘Cheryl, are you there?’

‘That’s cool,’ I said.

Simon had never actually asked me if I wanted the job, but he had already confirmed with Fox that I was doing it. He said he wasn’t telling the press anything at all, and I was to keep it a secret. In Simon’s world, the idea I might turn the job down didn’t exist, because it was a huge career opportunity, and didn’t everyone want to become an even bigger star and earn even more money?

I put the phone down and felt absolutely nothing, again. No excitement, no fear, no nerves, just absolute numbness. Literally the only thought that ran through my head was: ‘If I become famous in LA, where will I be able to escape to?’

I was in the process of moving out of the marital home by now. Ashley was going to move back into Hurtmore House when I was gone as it was close to Chelsea, and I had rented a place in Hadley Wood, North London, which was nearer to Kimberley, Lily and Hillary.

I stuck to what I’d said at the start of the divorce process and I didn’t want any possessions from the house at all. I’d told the lawyers to just deal with the split, and I’d signed the papers, asking for nothing except the dogs. I just wanted to get out of the marriage and out of the house, but as the day of the move got closer I became more and more emotional. I hadn’t anticipated this. It was heartbreaking packing up my clothes and still seeing some of Ashley’s in the wardrobe. Every room held a memory, and I cried every night when I got home.

I didn’t realise it, but I think I was actually going through a nervous breakdown. Throughout the live shows I was cracking up, in fact.