TO be honest, I never really warmed to Cheryl Cole.

I thought she was hard-faced despite her groomed, sparkly appearance. Also, I never forgave her for beating up that toilet attendant years ago.

While people fell over themselves to declare the Girls Aloud singer “gorgeous, stunning, beautiful”, I thought she didn’t really deserve credit for that.

Yes, she has a face so ridiculously pretty it makes a mockery of the phrase “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” but so what?

Just because she had the good fortune to have been spared a beating by the ugly stick, it doesn’t make her a contender for Woman Of The Year, does it?

And anyway, isn’t beauty passé now? Just look at Posh – and why else would Agyness Deyn, who looks like a teenage boy, be such a hit as a supermodel?

Cheryl is also mouthy. She was said to have pushed Lily Allen over the edge by calling her a “chick with a d***”.

She married a footballer, Chelsea’s Ashley Cole, and complained about WAGs.

She said she would never forgive her husband if he ever cheated on her. Lo and behold, despite her great beauty, he did – and, surprise surprise, she took him back.

Her reason? She claimed: “I am not his keeper” – as if wives who want to know what their husbands are up to at all hours are somehow out of order.

Burly

Thus, it was with some trepidation that I greeted the news of her joining X Factor.

X Factor? More like Vex Factor, I thought.

But I was wrong.

Yes, she has been bitching about co-judge Dannii Minogue on the ITV1 show, saying she is not attractive to men. (What is Dannii attractive to, then? Goats?!)

But it turns out Cheryl Cole, although not a sweetie, is actually like a cough sweetie – hard on the outside but soft on the inside.

Thanks to her, the so-called sob stories have really been living up to their name. She’s cuddled motherless contestants and hugged burly widowers.

Her tears have made her a splash hit. She will no doubt earn herself millions by getting snapped up for next year’s series – and this has taught me an important lesson. When in doubt, cry.

This is not to say Cheryl is a softie and a pushover. Far from it.

She stands up to Simon Cowell and isn’t afraid to break hearts and destroy dreams when she has to.

On more than one occasion she has uttered the crushing, but ultimately accurate: “I’m sorry, you’re not good enough.”

No, what her tears have done is prove that showing your emotions is not a bad thing.

We girls are conditioned to think tears are a sign of weakness – that they undermine us and make us look wet and pathetic.

But it actually makes us look human.

Yes, if Sarah Brown had bawled at the Labour conference, “Look at what you are doing to my husband?” she would have been a laughing stock.

But her teary-eyed show of support for her PM husband Gordon was extremely moving and hard-hitting.

We will see how strong Cheryl really is now we are at the boot camp stage – but as far as I’m concerned, I’ve seen her true colours. And they are very pretty.

DO you agree with Anila? Have your say below

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