CHERYL Cole has been picked up, discarded and humiliated on a global scale Her marriage crashed after husband Ashley cheated on her with a string of girls, then her career took a body blow with her sacking from the US X Factor.But now the singer and presenter is ready for her comeback, and she plans to return stronger and in complete control.
Cheryl Cole 2.0 – as one friend jokingly referred to the gorgeous Geordie with her steely new resolve – is determined never to let anyone walk over her again, least of all ex-husband Ashley.Showing off her new blonde hairstyle, Cheryl flew into Los Angeles on Thursday with friend and Girls Aloud bandmate Kimberley Walsh as she starts to make the most of her enforced holiday, caused by her embarrassing US X Factor exit.Back at home, cooling his heels, is footballer Ashley, 30, who is in training with Chelsea after a summer break spent chasing his ex-wife.
Cheryl, 28, and Kimberley, enjoyed spa sessions and days by the pool at her £500-a-night suite at an exclusive West Hollywood hotel, putting all the pain and anguish of recent months behind her.
A friend says: “The hurt and pain from what happened with the X Factor have gone now. She is back in control and saying she is a new person.
“We joke that it is Cheryl 2.0 – a new and improved version of our friend.
“Rightly or wrongly, what has happened has given her big exposure on both sides of the Atlantic and she aims to exploit that to the full. She has got some big ideas.”
On Friday Cheryl enjoyed a meal with ex-boyfriend Derek Hough at an exclusive Los Angeles sushi restaurant.
WARY
The message for Ashley not to take her for granted was loud and clear.The rest of the week she plans to spend by the pool or hunting for a bolthole in the world’s showbiz capital. It will be her base as she launches her music and television career in earnest in America, under the watchful eye of her manager, Black Eye Peas’ svengali Will.i.am.
Kimberley is pleased to see her friend getting her life back on track but she is still wary of Ashley.The friend says: “Cheryl has told her friends to trust her judgment, but they’re far from convinced.“Kimberley plans to make her feelings clear to Ashley: stop messing her around. It’s all or nothing this time.
“Cheryl’s closest friends are fiercely loyal and want to protect her.
“She has had a terrible time and they don’t want her making a mistake again.
“Kimberley is going to listen and advise but she won’t judge her. She knows Cheryl knows what she is doing.”
It has become clear that as Cheryl has reassessed her priorities over the past few weeks, she realised quite how much she missed Ashley.
To say her former mentor Simon Cowell – whom friends say she’s vowed never to speak to again – is not a big fan of Ashley is something of an understatement.
CHEATING
If he was still any kind of an influence in her life, it’s hard to see any reunion taking place.
The tender scenes between the divorced couple at Cheryl’s 28th birthday bash at London’s Sanderson Hotel 10 days ago would certainly never have occurred.Either Cheryl has convinced herself that Ashley has changed his cheating ways or, but it seems unlikely, she is willing to turn a blind eye.Relationship expert Gleadeana McMahon says: “Sometimes women get addicted to men. She is a beautiful and talented lady yet she keeps going back to him. There is something between them that Cheryl finds hard to leave.
“She’s either chosen to make excuses for him or she really believes he’s changed. It’s possible a man can change if they do a lot of soul-searching and recognise why they have needed all that attention – it’s usually down to insecurity.
“But if he doesn’t deal with these issues he’ll make all the promises in the world, then something will happen and he will do it again.”
If Ashley is serious about rekindling his romance with Cheryl, he has an odd way of showing it.
A few weeks before Cheryl’s LA trip, Ashley was in the same city on a lads’ holiday and it was certainly a more riotous affair than Cheryl’s.He rented a mansion for the summer and was spotted clubbing around the city. One night, at Los Angeles’ exclusive Colony Club, he was pictured cuddling a blonde in a tiny black playsuit.
It’s no wonder Cheryl is playing it cool now. The friend says: “Cheryl could have spent the last few weeks before the football season together with Ashley. He flies off to Hong Kong for a tournament soon yet she chose to fly to Los Angeles and go out to dinner with her ex.
“She and Derek are good friends despite breaking up and she values his advice. But she knows that it will annoy Ashley immensely.
“She is not going to rush into things like before. Things have changed since their divorce, the balance of power has shifted.
“She is now the major star with things starting to heat up again in America while Ashley knows he only has a few years left in his football career.”
The turnaround has been dramatic.When the couple first met in 2004, as neighbours in a North London block of flats, she was a singer in the then rather tacky girl group spawned from TV show Popstars: The Rivals and he was the international football star.
They were dubbed the cut- price Posh and Becks and for their wedding in 2006 they signed a £1million deal with a celebrity magazine.
Perhaps, Cheryl’s lowest point was that year when they appeared in a National Lottery advert. Dressed in matching white outfits they looked like they had walked straight out of a Basildon nightclub.Since then Girls Aloud have become a much-loved band, Cheryl has launched a solo career and branched out into TV. But her marriage became a casualty of her burgeoning career when a slew of women told newspapers that Ashley had slept with them while married.
Hairdresser Aimee Walton said she had “enjoyed” drunken sex after meeting him in a West End nightclub. Classy Ashley vomited during sex, she said.
BETRAYED
More flings emerged and in February 2010 she announced they were separating. Ironically, her unwanted new role of wronged wife only added to her popularity as the nation sympathised.A year later she was betrayed by another man, this time her mentor Simon Cowell.
After two series as a judge on The X Factor, she was hired to help spearhead the show’s launch in America. But just days into filming she was unceremoniously dumped, with Cowell unable to save her.In her pain and hurt at being so publicly humiliated, and away from Cowell’s influence, it was to Ashley she turned.
At her birthday party she kissed and cuddled her ex in front of friends. Some said she even performed a lap dance.
Cheryl’s mother Joan Callaghan, 51, is none too pleased at seeing the love rat slip back into her daughter’s life.But Cole is older and wiser now. Will.i.am believes he can still make her a star in the States in music and on TV
The friend says: “There are some big things in the pipeline. Babies are certainly not on her agenda just yet but her career is. That is where all her energy is going in the next year.”
0 komentar:
Post a Comment