Cheryl: My Story

‘Excuse me, can you buy us 10 Lambert & Butler?’ we asked if we were feeling flush and had some of our £1.50 weekly pocket money left. Otherwise we asked a likely looking adult to buy us a ‘single’, which usually meant we got a Regal cigarette.

I smoked from about the age of 13, because everybody did. It was like with the vodka and Irn-Bru Dolly gave me. I didn’t really want the booze or the ‘tabs’, as we called cigarettes, but I knew that despite the scrapes I got into at school, most people saw me as a Goody Two-shoes because of my singing and dancing, and I didn’t want to stand out any more.

For the same reason, it wasn’t long before I smoked weed too. Everybody did it and I gave in to peer pressure at a party in someone’s house one weekend.

‘Go on, Cheryl, it won’t kill you,’ one of the lads said, and so I puffed on a joint. I didn’t particularly like it, but after that I started smoking more and more. Loads, in fact. It didn’t seem to affect me that much; it just made me feel a bit more relaxed, like nicotine did. It did have one big advantage over cigarettes though: weed was a lot easier to get hold of because you didn’t have to ask an adult to go into the corner shop for you. It was always readily available on the street and that’s why I smoked so much of it.

Other drugs were a different matter. I knew stuff like speed and Ecstasy and even cocaine were available on the street, but I was scared of all those drugs. I’d seen some of the older boys in local gangs looking completely out of control, off their heads on God knows what. Andrew’s glue-sniffing had freaked me out too, and I hated to see anyone with that crazed look in their eyes. My dad was fiercely anti-drugs, and so was Drew. They both drummed it into me to avoid drugs and I listened. I didn’t think they meant weed because everyone smoked weed, and it didn’t worry me because it didn’t make people lose control like all the other stuff did.

Once I was well established at Metroland Drew started to encourage me to think about recording music as well as performing, and he began fixing up some studio sessions, both in Newcastle and down in London. I just went along with whatever he suggested. I was keen to learn, and going to London seemed like the right move if I wanted to make it as big as a band like Damage.

‘You hated it down there when you went to the Royal Ballet,’ my mam said.

‘I was only 10 years old!’ I replied. ‘It’s different now. I’m 14. I’m ready for it.’

She sent Gillian with me the first time I went to London, and a few times after that. We travelled in a tiny Mini Metro that only did about 60mph. A friend of Drew’s drove, and it felt like it took us about 20 hours to get down south.

When I was there I did a ‘showcase’ for different record labels and met the ‘development team’ of a ‘management company’ called Brilliant.

‘What the hell does all that mean?’ Gillian asked.

‘I don’t have a clue,’ I replied. ‘I’ll just do me singin’ and then we’ll go home.’

It was always like that. It probably sounded quite glamorous to my mates back home but to me it wasn’t much different to going into the studio in Newcastle. I’d be asked to have a go at different tracks, and I knew I was one of lots of other teenagers who were looking for a break and doing exactly the same as me.

We would usually travel there and back in a day, and I remember once the car got broken into when we stopped on the North Circular to go and get a McDonald’s on the way home. Gillian’s quilt was stolen along with a few of her bits and pieces, but the worst thing was that the whole back window was smashed out, and we had to drive all the way back to Newcastle with a plastic bag taped over the gap where the window should have been. The rustling noise did our heads in all the way home. It was freezing cold and we clung to each other for the whole journey, trying to keep warm.

‘Why is there always some kind of drama with you, Cheryl?’ Gillian moaned.

‘With me?’ I replied indignantly. ‘It’s not my fault we get into these types of pickles, is it?’

Not long after that trip I decided to dye my hair blonde. I loved Destiny’s Child and I wanted to be Beyoncé. ‘Blonde hair looks brilliant on her,’ I said to Gillian. ‘I’m sure it’ll work for me too. It’ll look good with me dark skin.’

Gillian didn’t try to stop me, even though I had form when it came to experimenting with this type of thing. One time I decided to wax my sister’s top lip by melting some candle wax, sticking it on her ‘tash’ and then ripping it off quickly when it hardened. Once that was done I dabbed the red-raw skin with lemon juice. God only knows what I was thinking. Gillian had a massive red rash for ages afterwards and Mam went crazy with me. I did the same to myself and to one of my cousins’ eyebrows once too, with the same disastrous results.

Anyhow, I took myself off to a local hairdresser’s one day, where they put coconut bleach on my head for about eight hours. I sat there patiently, thinking it would all be so worth it, but I was absolutely mortified when they’d finished. I didn’t look anything like Beyoncé. Instead, to use Dolly’s phrase, I looked more like a ‘buckin’ Belisha Beacon’.

I cried and cried, and Dolly’s daughter was so angry she took me back to the shop.

‘Cheryl, you look ridiculous!’ she said. ‘You should get a refund!’

Red-faced, I trailed back to the hairdressers with her, only to be sent away with the offer of a free conditioning treatment I didn’t even want.

‘If they think I’m stepping foot in there again they’ve got another thing coming,’ I sobbed.

Before long Drew introduced me to Ricky, a musician friend of his down in London. Ricky had heard me sing, and he and his wife took quite a shine to me and said I could stay with them whenever I wanted to. Sometimes I did, or sometimes Gillian and I stayed in a £19-a-night hotel with just a bed and a sink, but at least it meant I didn’t have to go up and down to Newcastle in one day if I had the opportunity of some studio time at Brilliant.

I began writing songs with Ricky and I just loved it. I’d go down to London during every school holiday and sometimes at the weekends, getting a lift or taking the train to King’s Cross. I wasn’t being paid and I had never signed anything with Drew; I was just trying to get as much experience under my belt as I could.

Brilliant eventually became the hugely successful 19 Management company, but back then it was only a small outfit, which was perfect for a teenager like me taking my first steps in the music industry.

‘You know what, Mam?’ I said one day. ‘Every time I get past Stevenage when I go down south I get a warm, tingling feeling in me body. It’s like I belong in London. It’s where I’m gonna be. And the funny thing is, the closer I get to home on the way back, the less I can breathe.’

Mam howled laughing, which was quite irritating seeing as she was supposed to be the spiritual one. I really did feel drawn to London, though. Everything looked twinkly down there. I can clearly remember the first time I saw Piccadilly Circus. ‘What is this?’ I thought, standing there looking at the giant advertising hoardings and flashy neon signs. Everything was sparkling, all around me. I’d been brought up to be streetwise and my dad in particular had always tried to keep my feet on the ground. But in London I couldn’t help dreaming big dreams. I was going to be a pop star. It was absolutely what I was going to do.

I was 15 now, and my school days were very nearly over, thank God. ‘You need to try hard, Cheryl,’ my dad would say. ‘Get some exams under your belt and then you can get to college.’

‘Dad, you don’t need GCSEs to have a number one record, and that’s how I’m going to make my living.’

While I was in my last couple of terms at school I got myself a job in the local café, JJs on Heaton Road. I wanted to earn money for clothes, as well as for my trips to London. I loved United Colours of Benetton at the time, and to afford clothes like that I’d started taking out loans with the ‘Provi’ man. He was always on the estate, the ‘Man from the Provident’, lending money out. I borrowed £200 from him the first time, which I had to pay back in weekly instalments, with interest, of course.

The café was perfect for me. It was only down the road from our house and I could work part-time, which meant I could earn a bit of money but still concentrate on my music. Right from the start I enjoyed chatting to the customers and making teas and coffees and all-day breakfasts. The owner, Nupi, was a lovely old Asian guy who’d led an amazing life. I was always attracted to people who had stories to tell, and we really hit it off.

‘Two teas, please, Smiler,’ Nupi said to me on the very first day, and the nickname stuck.

I have to be honest here; a lot of the time I was smiling about something else that was going on in my life, rather than at the joy of frying bacon and making tea. I had a boyfriend, who I kept secret from just about everyone. I have never spoken about him before, but he was actually my first proper boyfriend, and he affected my teens in a massive way.

Dave lived locally and I’d seen him around the estate for years before we started dating. I bumped into him in the street one day on the way home and I swear that something literally went ‘boom’ between us. I hadn’t seen him for a while and I had never fancied him before, but I fell for him in a big way, right there and then. I’d never experienced anything like it in my life before. He was absolutely gorgeous looking, and I could tell by the way he looked at me that he fancied me too.

‘Are you going to let me take you out for dinner?’ he asked after we’d done a bit of flirty catching up.

The question took me completely by surprise. I’d never been taken out to dinner before. I knew Dave was quite a bit older than me and I felt very flattered. I’d kissed a couple of other boys since my very first kiss with John Courtney, and I’d been out with one or two other boys for a week or so here and there, but nothing serious.

I’m sure I blushed, and I excitedly agreed to let Dave take me out.

‘How old are you?’ I asked on our first date.

‘24.’

I gulped.

‘Don’t worry,’ Dave smiled. ‘I will take good care of you.’

We were in a fancy restaurant and I felt incredibly grown up.

Dave really knew how to treat a girl, or so I thought. After that he took me out for lots of candlelit dinners and he regularly bought me flowers, CDs, teddy bears – you name it. I fell for him in a huge way, and I mean huge.

I didn’t tell a soul at first, because I was only 15 and still at school, and I knew my dad and Joe would go absolutely mad about Dave’s age. It was easy to meet in secret anyhow. Everyone was used to me going to Metroland on my own for hours on end, or to the local recording studios. It meant I didn’t have to lie or even sneak around when really I was going out with Dave.

‘Would you like to learn to drive?’ he said one night when he picked me up near school in his car.

‘I’m too young. How can I?’

‘I know where we can go. Hop in.’

He took me to an empty car park in town, and that’s where I had my first driving lessons. It was so exciting. I’d still be in my school uniform, but I felt like a proper grown-up woman, madly in love for the very first time. It was a really amazing feeling.

‘Go on, have a smoke,’ Gillian said one day, passing me a joint. She was 19 and had left home by now and moved into a flat of her own, but she was in the kitchen of our house at Langhorn Close, smoking weed, with my mam standing right beside her.