Being Nicole Scherzinger...

She’s come a long way since making pancake mix last a week and buying clothes at garage sales. Here, NICOLE SCHERZINGER reveals the private, painful lessons she’s learned

- Lottie Lumsden

Lunchtime, and Nicole Scherzinger is singing Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog very loudly. It’s accompanied by bursts of spontaneous dancing, bottom-shaking and finger-clicking. It’s an astonishing show, not only for the fact that Nicole has a pair of lungs on her to rival Pavarotti, but also for the fact that she appeared on set only a few hours earlier, bleary-eyed and clutching a pillow to her chest.

“Babes, I am exhaauusssted,” she groans, when we sit down later over a glass of Chardonnay. “I have been working on The X Factor for the past month non-stop. We have very late nights because we are all on Mr. Cowell’s schedule. I thought I was a diva until I got back on set with him!” This month will see Nicole return to screens as a judge on the 14th series of the reality TV show, alongside Simon, Louis Walsh and Sharon ‘Mrs O’ Osbourne. While some would argue that the panel has lost some of its original dazzle and pith, Nicole, however, has been the one to bring the excitement. She’s the judge backstage hugging and hand-holding each of her acts, and it is her tremulous eyes the camera pans to when a young performer fails on stage. Why? Because Nicole has been there. She knows the sting of rejection and the hardship of struggle. She understands the complicated burden of fame and the lacerating treatment from both the industry and the media. Nicole is a hustler who slogged it out for years before becoming a household name with The Pussycat Dolls in 2005, following the release of Don’t Cha. She has made her own money, built her own brand of fame and found her own unique way of navigating it all.