Cheryl Cole: Her Story - the Unauthorized Biography (12 page)

‘She was getting the change out of the bag, the lady just walked over and smacked her in the face. It was all just chaos then. I stood there and Cheryl said “Go and get the manager”, so I ran out. As I came out of the toilet I saw the security guard coming towards me and I said, “The lady in the toilet has just punched Cheryl in the face.” The security guard just walked in and went towards Cheryl. The lady and Cheryl were close and everybody was just shouting and stuff like that, then I saw the lady smack Cheryl.’

When prosecutor Patricia Lees suggested that perhaps Nicola had invented the story to give Cheryl a lifeline, the redhead responded: ‘I’m not going to lie for anybody. At the end of the day it’s my life, my career, I’m not going to lie for anybody.’

As the trial drew to a close, a couple of character witnesses for Cheryl were called to the stand to offer the jury a truer picture of the defendant. Anoop Bedi, a businessman who had employed Cheryl in a café in Newcastle, said the twenty-year-old was a very friendly and helpful person, adding that fame had not changed her. More importantly, he said, ‘She might be a lot of things, but she is never a racist’. Songwriter Ricky Hanley, who worked with Cheryl before she’d found fame with
Girls Aloud, also underlined the fact that ‘There is absolutely no way she could be called a racist’.

In the closing speeches, prosecuting counsel Patricia Lees painted a venomous picture of a young popstar who had let fame go to her head. ‘Even important or famous people can behave very badly indeed and they have been known to do things which are wholly inappropriate to their status, particularly if they are seen as upstanding members of the community, politicians or role models, and sometimes it is a question of having too much too young. These people are not above the law, nobody is.’

She added: ‘Celebrity can be a difficult thing. She was nineteen, she had a few weeks of meteoric success and she had too much to drink. Here was this woman telling her – the girl who had been taken up to the VIP suite, given champagne, announced over the DJ system, staggering out of the cubicle – telling her she has to pay for a handful of lollipops. How do you think she took it? Who do you think was behaving well or badly? The stone-cold sober lavatory attendant who might lose her job, or the drunk Cheryl Tweedy who was frankly all over the place? The defendant has a very strong motive to lie; she has a lot of things riding on it for her. She did not even know what the reaction of her new record company would be to this. She made up the lie, adapted it from her friend, who also lied, and probably thought it would never get this far.’

In her seat, Cheryl was visibly shaken. The words were ugly and so hurtful. She looked at the jurors. Were they lapping up the prosecution’s every word? Did they really think she was the monster she had been portrayed as? Stifling back the tears, she waited for Richard Matthews to give the jury a truer account of who Cheryl Tweedy was.

Mr Matthews reminded the jury that Cheryl had acted in self-defence and that she had not used any kind of racist terminology. But he also wanted them to remember that the nightclub’s director, Paul Endersby, had contacted a PR agent within an hour of the row because he ‘wanted assistance on how best the media could be handled’. He also pointed out how the PR agent, known as Keith, had interviewed staff from the club within hours of the incident before arranging an exclusive deal for the story with the
Sunday Mirror.

The judge adjourned the case until the following Monday, which meant Cheryl spent a restless two days thinking through all the options that lay before her. If she were found guilty of racially aggravated violence, would she be kicked out of the band? Or worse still, what if the judge decided that she deserved a jail sentence?

There was no way she’d survive a spell in prison. That one night in the cell in Guildford back in January was hard enough – spending months behind bars didn’t bear thinking about. Luckily, she told the
Sun
, she had mum Joan by her side to comfort her. In Cheryl’s flat in north London, cradling Cheryl in her arms, Joan told her daughter that she wasn’t to worry about anything, that whatever happened, she and the rest of her family would help Cheryl get through it. Cheryl would later tell reporter Victoria Newton from the
Sun
that if it hadn’t been for Joan, she wouldn’t have got through it. ‘My mum moved down to be with me for a week before the case. I just wanted her there with me – I couldn’t have coped without her. She was my rock. I was totally useless, I couldn’t do anything for myself and I was in tears all the time. She washed and ironed all my clothes and cleaned my flat. I feel
awful for putting my family through all this but they were fantastic.’

On 20 October 2003, Cheryl awoke with her heart in her mouth: the accusation of racism and the prospect of a criminal record had cut her to the quick. Arriving at the court with Joan by her side, Cheryl kept her head down as the feverish paparazzi shot picture after picture. Once inside the court, it was clear to all in attendance that Cheryl looked half the woman she was at the start of the trial. Over the past week or so, she had lost around half a stone from the stress of the case and her clothes were hanging loose on her. ‘I couldn’t eat a thing,’ she remembered in the
Sun
newspaper shortly after the court case. ‘I’d put something in my mouth but I just couldn’t swallow it, it was horrible.’

When Judge Richard Howarth instructed the court to rise, Cheryl felt a little wobbly on her feet. His verdict was one that could potentially destroy her life completely if it didn’t go her way. The judge described the incident as an ‘unpleasant piece of drunken violence’ and said Cheryl had shown ‘no remorse whatsoever’. He then announced that the jury of seven men and five women had found Cheryl guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, but that she had been cleared of another charge of racially aggravated assault.

As a result, she was sentenced to 120 hours’ community service and was ordered to pay £500 compensation to the victim and £3,000 prosecution costs. As the words tripped off the judge’s tongue, Cheryl broke down and buried her face in her hands. She had never been in trouble with the police before, yet now she had a criminal record. She was angry at herself, ashamed and feeling terrible for upsetting her devoted
mum who had brought her up so well. There was relief that she would no longer be seen as a racist, but it was still a bitter pill to swallow.

As Cheryl left the courthouse with her mother by her side, she wondered what the media would make of this, but her worries were laid to rest when her label, Polydor, informed her that she had nothing to worry about – her place in the band was safe. They even issued a statement to reassure fans that Cheryl was going nowhere. ‘We are pleased Cheryl has been found not guilty of the main charge against her,’ it read. ‘In light of this decision, Cheryl’s position in Girls Aloud is unaffected.’

While her fans were universally thrilled that Cheryl had been cleared of a charge that few had believed in to begin with, some media observers took it upon themselves to use Cheryl’s experience as a stick with which to beat any young stars who thought they were beyond the law.

In her
News of the World
column a week after the verdict, Ulrika Jonsson had her say – and it didn’t make for easy reading. ‘Cheryl Tweedy from the pop group now more commonly known as “Girls A Lout” has got her just deserts. Her behaviour when she punched a toilet attendant showed she has let drink AND fame go to her head. She is an arrogant bully who, it goes without saying, sets an abysmal example to young women. However, I predict she will go solo and have a highly successful career. There’s nothing like bad publicity for selling records.’

But Cheryl wasn’t going to let Ulrika get away with her damning comments and told the
Sun
, ‘I was furious by what she said. I just thought, “I’ve never met you, you don’t know
me, how would you know? How dare you say that about me!”’ She went on to add: ‘She says I’m a bad role model – well, what kind of role model does she think she is? I’ve got news for her – she just needs to take a look at herself and watch out if she ever bumps into me or the girls. I was so upset that fans might think that of me.’

In an interview with the
Sun
straight after the trial, Cheryl paid tribute to her bandmates who she said had really come through for her. ‘Sometimes I just wanted to be on my own but the girls were amazing. We are best friends; I’m not sure that people can quite understand how close we are. I didn’t ever think about quitting but I did worry what it meant for my future in the band.’

Kimberley Walsh told the
Sun
that their pal’s dreadful ordeal had made them a much tighter unit. ‘What has happened with Cheryl has actually brought us all a lot closer. It could have been any one of us that got involved in a situation like that, where things go wrong, and we’re so lucky that we all are genuinely the best of friends.’

And if Cheryl had any worries that the court case would have affected the band’s popularity, they were forgotten when their single ‘Jump’, taken from the
Love Actually
film soundtrack, debuted on the chart at number two in November 2003.

Cheryl carried out her community service back home in Newcastle so she could be near her friends and family, should she need their support. The work was tough – the complete opposite of the glamorous popstar life of which she had dreamed. There were no red carpets or glam frocks here. But she didn’t complain. She felt so bad about what had happened, what she had put her family and bandmates through, that if picking
up litter and sandpapering benches at the Blue Star football ground in Woolsington would show people how very sorry she was, then so be it. She would later say that her community service had brought her back to earth with a bump.

‘I had to sand benches every day and had the company of some real rough diamonds,’ she told the
Sun.
‘The Geordie blokes really gave me the shake I needed. The experience was positive. I had a spell working in a care home with multiple sclerosis sufferers as well and it was really rewarding. The idea of community service sounds really grim but it made me realize just how lucky I was to lead the life I do.’ She went on to explain that during her punishment no one treated her like a popstar and she was grateful for it.

‘The people I was working with every day were great and didn’t treat me any differently than anybody else,’ she recalled. ‘There was one old guy who had MS and I had to dress him and give him cereal in the morning. He was just so sweet. I really hope we’ll stay in touch.’

Cheryl ended the year the way it had begun with a hero’s welcome performance at G-A-Y at the Astoria club. It may have been something of an
annus horribilis
for her, but she was grateful that the fans were still behind her.

The court case aside, 2003 had been a good year for Cheryl in many respects. The band had gone from strength to strength and enjoyed four top-ten singles and a top-five album. The girls had become pin-ups and tabloid dreams, they had been lusted after by celebs and had out-lived their rivals from
Popstars: The Rivals
, One True Voice, who had split in August 2003.

Cheryl’s dreams of pop stardom had finally come true, but
she’d almost lost it all in a split second of madness. So what better way to start the new year off and forget the negative events of 2003 than by giving the paparazzi a picture to remember – by giving her best mate Nicola a big kiss on the lips!

That infamous Britney-Madonna-style kiss shared between two friends at G-A-Y predictably had all the papers the following Monday teasing their readers by playing up its ‘lesbian’ overtones. But it was just a bit of fun. And that’s what Cheryl wanted 2004 to be about.

With her community service out of the way, Cheryl was looking forward to focusing on life in the band and making sure it went from strength to strength. ‘2004 is definitely going to be my year,’ she declared. ‘I want to put the past year behind me.’

And so Cheryl threw herself into her work enthusiastically, and seemed to love every minute of it, even more so than she had before. When she appeared at Newcastle’s Powerhouse club in early January, she was amazed by the reaction of the crowds. Even before they had stepped out on stage, the girls could hear the chants of support from the 1,400 revellers from their dressing room. And when they actually walked onto the stage, they were
nearly blown away by the deafening roar of the appreciative fans. Club manager Chris Gilroy said afterwards that he had never seen a crowd like it at the popular gay venue. Girls Aloud were as sought after as ever, and Cheryl was over the moon.

For the next few weeks, the girls appeared at various shows and were pleased that they had been added to several upcoming Radio 1-sponsored gigs. There was no sign of their popularity waning as had been the case for previous reality show bands. As they merrily went about their business, they ignored comments from Spice Girl Mel C on
CD:UK
, who branded them ‘pop puppets’ and suggested that they’d never be the global phenomenon the Spice Girls had been. And they didn’t care a jot when LostProphets singer Ian Watkins referred to them as ‘braindead bimbos’.

Girls Aloud had heard all this kind of criticism before, and over the past year they had grown a thick skin. Every time a negative comment was thrown at them, they’d remember the many glowing reviews their first album had received or the joy they’d seen on the faces of their thousands of happy fans. As long as they kept their fans happy, who cared what a former Spice Girl and the frontman of a relatively obscure rock band had to say?

Meanwhile, away from the band, rumours bubbled up again that Cheryl was dating Kieron Dyer. According to reports, she and Kieron were spotted snogging in the VIP section at trendy London club Nell’s. After a few drinks there, the couple allegedly made a break for it, trying to fool the paparazzi by leaving separately but then, when the coast was clear, jumping into a taxi and heading over to Trap club. There they were ushered past the red rope into the VIP area before hitting the
dancefloor where they were apparently unable to keep their hands off each other.