Cheryl only trusts her mother and dogs

Cheryl Cole admitted today she did not trust anybody – including her footballer husband Ashley – other than her mother and her dogs.

The Girls Aloud singer and X Factor judge has previously described allegations of infidelity on the part of Ashley as “horrendous”.

In an interview in the Sunday Times magazine, Cole said: “I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t trust anybody in life except my mother and my dogs.

“I’m scared to let people know how much they mean to me, and it’s scary that you can love a small hairy thing so much.”

Her mother, Joan, often stays at the Coles’ Surrey home, cooking and providing emotional support when needed.

But Cole, 26, said her marriage was “happy”, describing Ashley as a “simple person”.

“Nothing’s under the surface with him,” she added. “Nothing’s a problem, everything’s easy and comfortable. He’s a genuine nice person.”

But Cole also admitted she was realistic about life’s ups and downs, positioned as she felt on “the biggest rollercoaster ever”.

After growing up on a council estate in Heaton, Newcastle, Cole dreamed of being a ballerina as a child.

She shot to fame when she won her place in Girls Aloud on ITV’s 'Popstars: the Rivals' in 2002.

Her parents met when her father was 17 and her mother was a 21-year-old mother-of-three, she told the magazine.

“I love my parents to bits,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do without them.”

Cole, who said she would love to have a big family of her own in the future, also spoke of difficulties experienced by her brother and grandfather because of alcohol and said she did not drink more than the “odd glass of wine to relax”.

“Drinking is scary to me now,” she said. “I’m scared of losing control of how I feel or what I’m thinking.”