'I'd just turned 18... I don't think I was remotely sexy'

Little Mix's Jade Thirlwall is newly solo with a debut electropop hit to her name. She talks to Annabel Nugent about the downside of fame and how she's never feared 'clapping back'

-  Annabel Nugent

Before Jade Thirlwall was Jade from Little Mix, she was Jade from South Shields, contestant number 159420 on The X Factor. It was on that show in 2011 that Thirlwall, baby-faced at 18, joined hands with three other teen hopefuls to form Little Mix, setting off a chain reaction of events that would see them become Britain’s biggest, best-selling, Brit-winning girl group since the Spice Girls.

It’s been three years since Little Mix announced their hiatus in 2022 – an eternity in music – but within minutes of meeting Thirlwall, who is now 32, I’m reminded of the iron grip their slick, snappy bubblegum pop had on the nation. The chorus of “Shout Out to My Ex” – one of several No 1s; a true bop unmatched in its stinging takedown of a bad boyfriend – comes to mind instantly, as easily recalled as the name of my first pet or my mum’s birthday.

Thirlwall enters the restaurant in megastar mode, which is to say incognito. The brim of her fluffy leopard-print hat flops over her eyes as she hurriedly sits down at our table upstairs undetected by the craning necks below. She’s wearing a baggy jumper and red tartan sweatpants. On anyone else, it might look like pyjamas.

There is, of course, something missing from this picture. Or three somethings: the friendly faces of her Little Mix bandmates, who have for so long existed cheek-to-cheek with Thirlwall. Today, it’s just her. Interviews are different “because I don’t have my girls egging me on”, she says, recalling one of their first ever sit-downs as a band. “We got asked what love smelt like, and we said ‘Cock!’”