[Cyria]

Guardian article:

Hanging out with Girls Aloud, whose ages range from 23 to 28, is sometimes like dealing with a bunch of mouthy teenagers and sometimes like confronting a group of very practised media professionals. Occasionally the personas overlap, as when I asked them what roles each of the Girls fulfil in the group. Kimberley says she is "the organiser"; Nadine promptly and repeatedly describes herself as "the singer - I do most of the vocals", which chimes oddly with the group's frequently professed "confederacy of equals" ethos. But then Nicola breaks off, protesting the question is "too . . . too . . ." Self-analytical? "Yeah!" she cries, and the rest loudly agree. Are they bored by such introspection? Or are they trying to avoid revealing too much? A little of both, probably.

The most revealing moment of the group dynamic comes when they try to reveal nothing at all. Eventually, and squirmingly, I bring up the infamous tabloid story from last year about Cheryl's footballer husband Ashley Cole's vomit-flecked one-night stand. Did she do The X Factor partly to shuck off her "poor Cheryl" tabloid moniker?

"It wasn't, y'know," she begins, not even blinking at the question. "We didn't even talk about it, did we? Well, we did but . . ." When it looks like she might be beginning to go off-message Kimberley jumps in with a soothing PR-friendly statement: "I just think it's great that it's all ended so well. That's all I've got to say." Cheryl takes her bandmate's lead: "Yeah, I have far more positive things to go on about, so I do."