The ex-factor

THE dark glasses hiding her eyes. The hat pulled over her face. The coat collar turned up, concealing the rest of her face. But there was no disguising the lack of wedding ring on her ungloved hand.

Cheryl Cole flew back into the country yesterday and announced she was separating from footballer husband Ashley.

The only surprise was it took so long to go public. Stories of his sex texts and affairs have been in the media over the past few weeks.

The Newcastle-born singer and X Factor judge maintained a dignified silence, but friends and relatives didn’t see how she could forgive him again. It was only a matter of time before she announced the end of their fouryear marriage.

The 26-year-old Girls Aloud singer, who had a number one hit with her solo debut single Fight For This Love, has thrown in the towel and admitted defeat. She no longer wants to be a footballer’s wife faced with continued allegations about the England and Chelsea star’s unfaithfulness.

As she flew back to Britain from the US, where she fled when the latest reports about her husband surfaced, her spokesman confirmed: “Cheryl Cole is separating from her husband Ashley Cole. Cheryl asks the media to respect her privacy during this difficult time. We have no further comment to make.”

The news comes as sportsmen and their marital difficulties are making daily headlines with golfer Tiger Woods and England captain John Terry both involved in headline-making affairs. Cheryl’s statement ends one of the most high-profile showbusiness marriages between the footballer and the singer dubbed “the nation’s new sweetheart”.

The couple played out their romance and marriage in the full glare of the spotlight.

When Cheryl performed at last week’s Brit Awards, despite mounting pressure on their marriage, it was a woman going about business as usual despite her private heartbreak.

Claims about the 29-year-old footballer’s alleged infidelity have refused to go away. They were compounded by reports his mobile phone was used to send compromising pictures of him and indulge in “text sex” with two women.

CRACKS in the relationship began in early 2008 with claims he’d been unfaithful.

The allegations led to an apparent frosty patch with Cheryl removing her wedding ring, although they subsequently appeared to put their troubles behind them.

Home for the pair has been a mansion in Surrey, a far cry from the estate between Heaton and Byker where Cheryl Tweedy grew up one of five children.

She and Cole met in 2004 when they both had homes in the same London apartment block.

The pop star/footballer union soon led to them being compared to the Beckhams.

They were engaged in 2005 after he proposed in Dubai and they tied the knot the next year, with an OK! deal in place, despite her earlier saying: “We’re not doing a mag deal. We just want it to be a quiet affair.”

The fixture took place at Wrotham Hall, a Palladian mansion in Hertfordshire, in front of about 100 guests. Cheryl arrived in a white horse-drawn carriage with blacked-out windows, to protect her from prying eyes – and cameras not sanctioned by OK!

The relationship seemed close to breaking point 18 months later. Two women sold stories about their involvement with the player. This led, unsurprisingly, to rows and Cheryl removed her wedding ring for a spell. Later, she spoke of the allegations saying, “It was horrendous.

But look, Ashley’s young and he’s got a young mentality – for his age anyway.”

Cole antagonised newspapers by being fiercely protective of his private life. He has resorted to legal measures to protect himself from what his lawyers have claimed were invasions of his privacy. The player pursued privacy claims against The Sun and The Mirror.

He called in his lawyers again last year when, while his wife was on a fundraising climb of Mount Kilimanjaro, he was photographed talking to a woman at a nightclub.

He eventually settled “amicably” late last year, shortly after the release of his wife’s debut solo single Fight For This Love, a title some took to be a reference to her own struggle.

Cheryl’s career reached new heights as a judge and mentor on X Factor, where she guided young South Shields singer Joe McElderry to win the most recent competition.

Her solo single and debut album, 3 Words, made her one of the country’s most successful solo artists and earned her the sexiest woman in the world tag in FHM magazine’s poll.

Late last year she was seen again without her wedding ring on X Factor, although days later posted a picture on networking site Twitter of her wearing the ring, saying she’d removed it because it didn’t match her outfit.

That tell-tale ring was absent again by the time she appeared at the Brit Awards last week. This time it resulted from stories detailing how pictures of an undressed Ashley were texted to a glamour model. He said the images were sent after he passed the phone to a friend and had forgotten to delete them.

Yet days later another woman came forward to say she too had received saucy shots from the same phone months earlier. To compound the misery and pile on pressure, another woman came forward claiming she had slept with the player last year in the US.

When Cheryl Cole posted the photograph of her wearing her wedding ring on Twitter last year, the picture was accompanied with the message “3 words. Diamonds Are Forever”. It was a sentiment she felt unable to keep after the latest string of revelations about her husband and the sex factor.