Girls ready to tackle trek

CHERYL COLE and Kimberley Walsh said they would cope well without their usual attention to clothes and make-up while trekking up Mount Kilimanjaro.

The Girls Aloud singers are taking part in the gruelling eight-day trek in Tanzania to raise money for Comic Relief, every second of which will be filmed and aired in the run-up to Red Nose Day on March 13.

Walsh, 27, said: “The make-up and hair thing is obviously not good. The comfort’s good, the clothes are comfy and that’s more important.”

Cole, 25, dressed in the team uniform of tracksuit bottoms and Red Nose Day T-shirt, said: “If we didn’t have each other I think I’d struggle to get up there.”

“So I think we’re at a bit of an advantage having each other.”

The pair are attempting to reach the top of Africa’s highest mountain along with Gary Barlow, Alesha Dixon, Ben Shephard, Chris Moyles, Denise Van Outen, Fearne Cotton and Ronan Keating.

The journey is 38-year-old Take That singer Barlow’s brainchild, a challenge he said he hoped would “raise a mountain of cash” to provide people in Tanzania with mosquito nets that could protect against fatal malaria-spreading mosquito bites.

It has not been an easy training regime so far as the celebrities try to prepare for Kilimanjaro’s crippling altitudes.

Radio One DJ Chris Moyles, 34, said: “I’ve been running, walking, not drinking — that’s the hardest. The last couple of weeks me and a couple of the boys have been training in an oxygen chamber, which is ridiculously stupid.”

He added that he was looking forward to his first drink and hoped it would be at the top of the mountain: “At the Mount Kilimanjaro Arms, apparently it’s lovely so I can’t wait to get there,” he said.

The group also joked they may have a sing-a-long around the campfire. Cole said she had considered taking a banjo along, while Cotton suggested they sing a version of Take That’s Back For Good.

However, the team laughed off suggestions of recreating Swedish pop group Abba’s 1976 hit Fernando, the video of which is filmed around a campfire.

They will start their climb up Mount Kilimanjaro, which stands 19,340ft (5,895m) above sea level, at the end of February.