Cheryl: My Story. Cheryl

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СКАЧАТЬ two around our area who knew where we wanted to go. I never said that to any of my friends, of course, but that’s how it felt, especially now I was working at Metroland

      ‘I’ve got you a gig, Cheryl,’ Drew told me one day. ‘I think you’re ready for it.’

      I’d done lots of rehearsals with him by now and I’d been on the stage plenty of times at Metroland. I honestly can’t remember much about my early performances there, but I think that’s because it really didn’t feel like a big deal to me. I must have been only 12 the first time I took the microphone, but right from the start I always felt very comfortable on the stage. It felt just like an extension of all my dance shows, except I happened to be singing as well.

      I think my experience of ballroom dancing, as well as ballet, helped. When I was younger I’d had a regular ballroom partner for a few years called James Richardson. We won loads of competitions and made the finals of the National Championships in Blackpool. The pair of us also appeared on Gimme 5 together and on Michael Barrymore’s My Kind of People, which at the time was a really popular TV show. We went our separate ways when I suddenly got taller than James, but it had all been good experience for me, and it meant Metroland just felt like the next step in my career. The audience would typically be made up of families on a day out, or other kids who’d been dropped off while their mam went shopping. I never felt under pressure because the atmosphere was always friendly and people always clapped and cheered. ‘What’s the gig?’ I asked Drew confidently.

      ‘You’re doing the warm up for Damage,’ he replied, which made my heart skip a beat.

      ‘Bring it on! Wait till I tell me sister!’

      Damage was a really well-known boy band. To me they were proper, famous pop stars, but I wasn’t fazed at all. I felt ready, and I was really excited. When my big moment came I wore high-top trainers and baggy trousers with a little crop top, trying to look all cool and R&B like the boys. I remember my heart was pounding when I ran off the stage after completing a few well-rehearsed numbers, but my biggest memory from that time is being invited along to watch Damage perform on the Smash Hits Poll Winners’ Party, which was a TV show filmed at the Metro Arena.

      This was a programme I’d watched for years, dreaming of being on it one day. I remember standing in that arena literally open-mouthed, feeling within touching distance of making my dream come true.

      ‘Wow! This is it!’ I thought. ‘This is what I want to do.’

      From that point on I started performing regular gigs at Metroland. It was on the other side of the River Tyne to where we lived and took me 40 minutes to get there on the bus but I always did it willingly, every time. I just loved being on that stage. I felt alive. It’s where I felt like me.

      By contrast, when I was wearing my school trousers with their little pleats down the front, blue shirt, black blazer and striped Walker School tie I felt completely disinterested and out of place. My tie had a red stripe in it, showing I was in Walker House. ‘Red for danger’ the teachers probably thought, because I was nothing but trouble.

      ‘Cheryl Tweedy, you have brought shame on this school,’ my head teacher told me one day, after hauling me angrily into his office.

      I knew what this was about. A boy had spat at me on the bus, and so I’d sworn at him. That’s how I was brought up. If someone attacked a Tweedy, we were taught to defend ourselves.

      Right from when I was a small girl Joe and Andrew used to say to me: ‘Come on, Cheryl, if you don’t hit back you’ll get chinned.’

      ‘But I’m a ballerina!’ I’d say.

      ‘Well, what are you going to do – pirouette them to death?’

      My brothers would then hold up a couple of cushions and tell me to punch each one in turn.

      ‘Come on, Cheryl, left, right, left, right!’

      I’d reluctantly hit the cushions as my brothers drummed it into me to always stand up for myself.

      ‘It wasn’t me that started it,’ I complained now to the head teacher, rolling my eyes insolently.

      ‘Take that chewing gum out of your mouth this instant! There was an old lady on that bus who has complained to the school, and she has identified you from a picture line-up.’

      I was suspended for two weeks, which was the second time I’d had that punishment. On the previous occasion I’d been caught fighting, again when I was trying to stand up for myself. My dad never found out about the suspensions because he would have gone mental. Mam just said: ‘When will you learn, Cheryl?’ and sent me to go and tidy my bedroom, which was always a complete tip with crisp packets all over the floor.

      I spent the fortnight’s suspension mostly with Kelly. She wagged off and we went and stood outside the newsagent until we spotted someone who we thought looked like a ‘cool’ adult and wouldn’t mind buying us some cigarettes.

      ‘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 СКАЧАТЬ