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Living in Los Angeles for the past 10 years, 3,500 miles away from her bandmates, Nadine Coyle was often seen as the Girl Alone.
Unfairly blamed for the break-up of one of Britain’s most successful female groups, in reality she was the only one in Girls Aloud desperate for them to stay together.
But a year on from the band’s split, the singer now wants to set the record straight once and for all about what really went on behind dressing room doors.Contrary to popular opinion, it was Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, Sarah Harding, Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh who decided to call time on the group.Informing Nadine of their decision just minutes before they were all due on stage, she refused to sign a contract formalising their separation – and has not put pen to paper to this day.
She says: “I didn’t want the band to end, it was as simple as that.
“I didn’t think we were going to end – we had done all the promo saying we were all together, having a great tour, wearing Victoria’s Secret wings and stomping up and down the catwalk every night, loving every single minute of it.“And then, on the very last night of the tour, our management and publicist came up to me and said the girls wanted to split up the band. I was thinking, ‘What?!’
“I was in hair and make-up, about to get into my costume, and the show was starting in 20 minutes. I was shocked.
“I went back to my make-up lady and told her, and was like, ‘F***! I don’t have a job! What am I going to do?’ I screamed and cried on stage and off stage.“I was really dramatic for about 15 minutes and then I was over it again.
"But after that I was fine. I refused to even be sad about it. It is what it is. I couldn’t kick and scream, and change their minds – but had it been me, I would have done it differently. Not just before you go out on stage…“And then I went back to LA and got pregnant, so wasn’t around for what happened next. But I heard that they were saying that I knew the band wanted to split. No, no, no! I didn’t!
“They’re going to have to get their stories straight because my one has been solid. The truth remains pretty solid.”In her recent autobiography, bandmate Kimberley mentioned Nadine’s reluctance about the split, admitting the Northern Irish performer refused “point blank” to sign any press release.
In fact, Nadine, 29, reveals she would not sign any of the formal paperwork confirming the group’s demise.
She adds: “Thank God somebody told the truth because I never wanted the band to split up, and afterwards they were like, ‘Well, she knew’. I didn’t. I didn’t feel it was the right thing to do. I didn’t want to put my name to anything to do with it.
“So I said, ‘If you want to write this thing from these four, write it from these four – but I’m taking no part in it’.
“I never signed it, so technically I’m still in Girls Aloud. I’m a one man band! I need holograms made up of them so I can go back out on stage in 30 years’ time…”Insisting she still remains clueless as to the reasons behind the decision to call time on the band – which racked up four UK No1s and won a Brit – it is clear there is little love lost between them.
Indeed, she was as surprised as the rest of us after Cheryl announced her recent marriage to Frenchman Jean-Bernard. But she is even more surprised that fans expected her to be at the bash.
Smiling, she says: “I don’t know why people are shocked I wasn’t at the wedding. I mean, were you at Cheryl’s wedding?”When I reply that I, too, was NFI (not flipping invited), she quips: “I’m shocked!” But she insists: “I have nothing against Cheryl or the girls.” Nadine may have lived Stateside for the last decade, but her Northern Irish accent is as strong as ever.
She has lost none of her British humour and seems surprisingly unaffected.
Nadine, who had daughter Anaiya in January, is in the UK at the moment, singing alongside Michael Flatley in his Lord of The Dance: Dangerous Games tour. And it is a job she is relishing.
She says: “Growing up, this is what I imagined it would be like to be a singer.”
Currently performing at London’s Palladium, next year she will tour with the show across Europe and America.
The star is also “in talks” with a fashion house about the possibility of bringing out her own line, she has invested in a successful skin cream firm and her restaurant, Nadine’s Irish Mist, is doing a roaring trade in Sunset Beach, California.And, everywhere Nadine goes, so does baby Anaiya. The father is former American football star Jason Bell. He and Nadine, who got engaged four years ago, briefly split not long after the proposal, with the singer calling it off to “find herself”.But it did not last long, and the couple have been living together in LA ever since. Together, that is, when they are not fighting.
Taking things one step further than husband and wife Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter, who reportedly live in neighbouring houses, Nadine and Jason occasionally live in separate states.
Chatting over what appears to be a pint of coffee, she explains: “It’s hard being with a man, it really is.
“They just don’t ‘get’ you all the time. It’s especially hard after you’ve had a baby – sometimes you’re like, ‘I feel like I might hate you right now…’ I send him into the other room if we’re not getting on… or another house. I’m like: ‘I can’t look at you, go to the other house!’
“We’re lucky, we have a place in LA and New York so we can get breathing space from one another.
“So any time we need it, one of us will go to the other place – another state – or even another country. It’s healthy.”
Of their biggest row to date, Nadine adds: “He wasn’t impressed when I decided I didn’t want to be engaged any more, and took myself off to live in New York alone.
"We sort of split up, but not really. I was 25, engaged, and living in this beautiful house – it was all too much, all too good to be true.
“I felt like I needed to do a bit of suffering. So I went to New York and lived in this awful apartment. It was like something out of a movie – it was like a crack den, in the East Village.
“I thought I would try and find myself, but I was so scared the whole time. I lasted there a week. I ended up staying at the Hamptons. That was more like it.”
And while Nadine likes her luxuries, she also insists on nothing but the best for her little one.
She says: “I blend up all her own food. Yesterday, she had avocado and banana for lunch. For dinner I made her sweet potato, carrots, kale and broccoli.
“This is probably the ‘most LA’ thing I’ve ever done but her hair is so shiny, her eyes are so shiny. I think this is the secret to everything.”Happy, healthy and honest – Nadine Coyle is a Girl Alone no more.
sourcegr8 interview im glad nadine is happy!!! let's bop to insatiable
