'I don't really like the Wag tag because I think it's demeaning. I mean, I'm an independent woman, says NicoleHaving slogged hard to get to the top, former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger is a lot more relaxed on the diet and fitness front these days. But that certainly doesn’t mean her solo ambitions are taking a back seat to F1 beau Lewis Hamilton’s career, as Liz Jones discovers
I have a Pussycat Doll (well, a former Pussycat Doll) in my hotel room. She keeps ordering food, and glasses of white wine, which is something celebrities, especially female celebrities, rarely do. I keep thinking of all the men I could send a text message to who would be driven insane with jealousy that Nicole Scherzinger is perched on the end of my bed.
She is all in black – skin-tight jeans, curvy jacket – and she’s complaining about the cold: London is in the grip of a deep freeze. ‘I live in California!’ she cries. ‘Please can I shut the window?’
Nicole with F1 boyfriend Lewis Hamilton, left, and performing on The X FactorIf there is one woman in the world who can outdo Cheryl Cole in the incredibly, outrageously groomed glamour-puss stakes, it’s 32-year-old Nicole.
When she stood in for Cheryl as a judge on The X Factor, her lashes were longer, her black hair reached that impossibly round posterior, the clothes seemed airbrushed on to her naturally honeyed skin, and her affinity with the contestants bordered on the motherly. She was hilarious, rather than always being on the verge of crocodile tears.
To one clearly hopeless hopeful she said, deadpan, ‘You need to work on your vocals.’ She spotted the potential of eventual runner-up Rebecca Ferguson after about one perfect note. ‘She reminds me a little bit of Billie Holiday, maybe Aretha Franklin meets Etta James,’ she says today. ‘It’s just that really, really, you know, dirty-sounding voice.’
Nicole speaks in that slightly hushed, soft whisper beloved of so many American stars, but the gentle tones belie the fact that she possesses what is clearly an inner core of titanium. I’ve been reading her Tweets, and it seems 17-hour days are routine.The morning after we meet she says she has to be up at five. When I ask what she is going to do with the one evening she has free in London, she replies, ‘I am going to watch a film in my room and order room service!’
But when I ask how on earth she finds the time to maintain a body like hers – she’s a UK size 8 – she says she has in fact become more relaxed about her body, and is 11lb heavier than in her Pussycat heyday. She used to do that Los Angeles thing of never eating after 7pm, but with me she is tucking into the olives as if there’s no tomorrow, and it’s almost 7.30! ‘I’m a perfectionist, but I have been trying to be a little easier on myself,’ she says.
‘I love my pasta, my chocolate; I cook when I can. I love making down-home Southern cooking, and just chilling and having cakes and pies and baking stuff, you know. I’m a pretty simple girl. I’m eating now with you because I haven’t had time all day. Not a second.’Cakes? Pies? So does she work out all the time? I read that instead of feeling like a singer, she feels like an Olympic athlete. She shakes her head. ‘I’m taking a break now. For a couple of years, at the end of the Dolls, fitness was my life. I’m a lot more relaxed now. The choreography from the dancing keeps me in shape.
If I ever feel like I need to be stronger in my mind and body then I jog. I’m a runner, I like that. But I love to sleep. I used to not like to sleep but now I love it.’
On the day we meet, she gets the news that her single ‘Poison’ is number one on the UK iTunes chart. Sales were boosted by her live performance on The X Factor. Although she had huge success with the Dolls, you feel Nicole has still to prove herself as a solo artist.
Nicole’s new single ‘Don’t Hold Your Breath’ will be released on 13 March
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source: dailymail