There was a time when Cheryl Cole had her life mapped out on a road that was on fire. Young, beautiful, talented, wealthy and married to the love of her life, England and Chelsea footballer Ashley Cole, she wholeheartedly embraced the fame that made her a ‘national treasure’, with the couple heralded as the new Posh ‘n’ Becks.
She was going to be a young mother, she told journalists, who she was always eager to get in touch with – including me – during her 1990s heyday.
Enthusiastic and fun to talk to, she said she wanted lots of children, but emphasized that she would definitely continue working – both as a pop star, after making a name for herself as a contestant on the talent show Popstars: The Rivals in 2002, and with Girls Aloud, before becoming a much-loved judge on The X Factor.
The crowd couldn’t get enough of her and she seemed to enjoy every second of it. Decades later, it is painfully clear that things did not go according to plan.
Humiliated by Cole’s repeated infidelity, their marriage fell apart in 2010, as did her second, short-lived marriage in 2014 to French restaurateur Jean-Bernard Fernandez-Versini.
Far from the domestic happiness she had imagined, she was a single mother to her now nine-year-old son Bear, born during a relationship with the much younger and troubled One Direction member Liam Payne, who died from a Buenos Aires hotel in 2024 after a binge on drugs and alcohol.
The devastating accident saw Cheryl, 43, withdraw from TV, despising and shunning all media attention, to focus on her son.
But now, almost two years after Payne’s death, she is reportedly ready for a big comeback as a coach on ITV talent show The Voice UK, known for its swivel chairs.
Liam Payne, who was with Cheryl from 2016 to 2018, fell to his death from a Buenos Aires hotel in 2024 after a drug and alcohol binge
Liam posted this tribute to his son not long before his death in 2024
She is said to be in the final stages of talks with the network about joining next year’s series, with filming starting next month.
Cheryl also returns with a new campaign for skincare line Nivea, which was announced on Thursday, in a deal said to be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Her surprise comeback has prompted many of Cheryl’s former associates to wonder why she has decided to put herself back in the spotlight of the publicity she hated so much.
The answer is clear: she does it for Bear.
One source tells me she finally feels strong enough to pick up the thread of her old life, and she wants to make her son proud.
‘Bear has never seen her on television, so how wonderful it would be for him to see his mother on TV doing something she used to love.
‘Cheryl’s priority was her son and there have been some very difficult times, not just after Liam’s death but before that, so working was a no, as was living in the public domain.
‘She’s a brilliant mother and she wants Bear to grow up in private.
‘The Voice is fun, it’s pre-recorded and it’s the perfect way for her to dip her toe back into television and give Bear something to really laugh about. It’s been a horrible time for him since his father’s death. It has broken the hearts of Liam’s entire family.’
For the past six years, Cheryl has lived a quiet life with Bear in her country house in Buckinghamshire, without a hint of new romance.
Although she appeared alongside her former girl bandmates for a reunion tour in 2024, and played lead character Jenny in London’s West End thriller 2:22 A Ghost Story, her last television job was The Greatest Dancer in 2020 – which Bear didn’t see because he was so small.
Last year, there were rumors that she was close to joining The Voice, although no terms could be reached. Some suspect it was too soon after Payne’s death.
This year, however, sources tell me it will all go ahead, much to the delight of ITV bosses.
“ITV has been trying to get hold of Cheryl for years,” says my source. “They know what a coup it would be to get her back on their screens. The nation was obsessed with her when she was on The
‘The X Factor was a massive operation, The Voice is a much less daunting prospect for her, so there are a lot of happy people at ITV at the moment.’
Cheryl’s dream life began to unravel in March 2010 when it was claimed Cole had sent nude photos of himself to model Sonia Wild, then 28, which he strongly denied.
However, further kissing and telling followed. Then came Vicki Gough, a 30-year-old secretary who worked for Liverpool FC, who claimed she had sex with him twice before big matches.
Then there was American Ann Corbitt who claimed Cole slept with her in his Seattle hotel room while on tour with Chelsea the previous summer.
The allegations left Cheryl heartbroken. “Ashley was the love of her life, she loved him so much,” said a co-worker of Cheryl’s.
As a new single, she was moved from the British X Factor to the new American version of Simon Cowell. But he fired her after just a few auditions and replaced her with Nicole Scherzinger – who was previously the show’s host. Network executives were concerned that American audiences would not understand her Geordie accent and felt she lacked chemistry with fellow judge Paula Abdul.
Cowell later admitted that he thought she lacked confidence because she was still raw from her divorce.
There was one consolation, however. In the US, she formed an unlikely alliance with American rapper and Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am, with whom she collaborated on her rather ironically named 2008 song, Heartbreaker. He became a loyal friend and helped her pick up the pieces and smile again.
And now, fifteen years later, he will be by her side once again as she returns to our screens on The Voice, where he has been a judge since the show began in 2012.
However, it remains to be seen whether she will succeed in picking up the thread of her old relationship with the press.
She once loved writing about her every day. She didn’t even seem to mind when she was pitted against fellow X Factor judge Dannii Minogue on an almost weekly basis – not just because of their fashion, but also because of which of them was Cowell’s favourite.
And it was, of course, on The
They got together eight years later, when he was 22 and she was 32.
After returning from America with her tail between her legs, she initially refused to ever work with Cowell again.
Although she returned to television – working for Cowell on The X Factor in 2014 – few are aware of the long-term damage caused by Cole’s affairs and her being dropped from the US X Factor.
A friend of mine bumped into Cheryl a few years ago at a members’ club in Notting Hill, west London, where she talked about how hard she’d found being dumped by Cowell and how it had ultimately turned her against fame. How different it was in 2007, when I regularly encountered her. She seemed unyielding.
I remember her telling me how she instructed Cole to turn down an extremely lucrative offer to leave Arsenal for Real Madrid.
“I couldn’t let him do that,” she said passionately over a cocktail at Paper nightclub in the West End.
‘I’m a Girl Aloud, it’s my job. I love it and I won’t abandon the other girls and move to Spain.’
She also seemed to enjoy the press attention. I remember the morning her PR called my former boss to share the happy news that she and Cole were dating in 2004 – actively looking for column inches because they all knew how important it was for an Arsenal footballer to be dating a pop star.
Later she happily let me join her hen party at Umbaba nightclub in the West End, where she confided in me how nervous she was before her big day.
Recently I wrote a speculative story about how she could be pregnant next
disappears from the showbiz scene for a few weeks. When I bumped into her in a West London hotel a few weeks later, she and her bandmates were giggling as they criticized me for being so stupid.
She had indeed undergone surgery on her foot, but found the whole story very funny indeed. I’m not sure she’d be so jovial about it today.
The next time I saw Cheryl was at the Pride of Britain Awards in October 2011. We saw each other from our tables, she waved but she no longer wanted to talk to journalists.
Cheryl’s return will undoubtedly be very different from her previous ventures, but knowing how much she longed to be a working mother, having Bear watching her will make it by far the happiest job she has ever had.
