Stardom, drink, depression — the wild child of Britain’s biggest girl band battled them all... yet kept her biggest fight secret
THE judges on TV reality show Popstars: The Rivals took a matter of seconds to decide that Sarah Harding had star quality. ‘You’re through. You’re going to London!’ an animated Pete Waterman told her only a couple of lines into her audition song.
She blew a kiss to Waterman and fellow judges Louis Walsh and Geri Halliwell before dashing excitedly out, her blonde ponytail swishing as she went.
That day at the Lowry Hotel in Manchester — August 16, 2002 — was the beginning of an extraordinary rollercoaster ride, which would see Sarah become a key member of the UK’s most successful ever girl band and bring her wealth, fame and a wild child reputation.
Now, 18 years on, the 38-yearold has retreated behind closed doors as she embarks on the biggest battle of her life against metastatic breast cancer.
‘I’m fighting as hard as I can,’ she said yesterday, sharing a photograph on Instagram of herself in hospital, where she is having weekly chemotherapy.
Dark-haired and in a hospital gown, she was barely recognisable from her days as the blonde bombshell of Girls Aloud who, alongside bandmates Nadine Coyle, Cheryl Tweedy, Kimberley Walsh and Nicola Roberts, notched up hit after hit.
Once known to the other girls as ‘Hardcore Harding’ because of her wild partying, her past struggles with depression and alcohol addiction — not to mention her chequered love life — are well-documented.
But outside of her family and close circle of friends, no one appears to have known about her latest battle.
Growing up in Staines, Middlesex, Sarah’s dreams of finding fame were played out in front of her bedroom mirror with a hairbrush in hand. The family moved to Stockport, Cheshire, in 1996 when she was 14, and three years later her parents divorced. Sarah left school without sitting her GCSEs, later saying she ‘didn’t see the point’.
She explained: ‘I started hanging around with the wrong crowd, drinking heavily just trying to block out the pain of my parents splitting up.’
As well as alcohol, she experimented with cannabis.
After leaving school, she attended performing arts classes at North Cheshire Theatre College and took an NVQ in hairdressing and beauty so that she could earn money while she pursued her singing career.
She was 17 when she changed her surname from Hardman to Harding because she thought it sounded more starry.
WITH the help of a music producer, she began gigging in clubs and pubs in North Wales and was a member of a shortlived Stockport pop act called Project G.
It was in August 2002 that she saw an advert for a TV talent show searching for the biggest British girl band since the Spice Girls. Then aged 20, she went to the audition with a friend, camping out overnight to ensure a place at the front of the queue.
The next day, in slashed jeans and a black ballet wrap top, she wowed the judges. She was among 30 young male and female contestants sent to London and unveiled to the public in September 2002, when Popstars: The Rivals began its run. Housed in two mansions in Surrey — one for the boys, one for the girls — every week saw the eviction of a contestant from each house, until two groups of five remained, competing for the Christmas No 1 spot.
Sarah was the oldest member of the final line-up for Girls Aloud and their debut single, Sound Of The Underground took them to the top of the charts in December 2002, ensuring overall victory against their all-male rivals, One True Voice.
The years that followed brought the kind of success most musicians can only dream of. There were four No 1 singles, 20 Top 10 hits and two No 1 albums. By 2008 the group had a £30 million fortune under its collective belt and two mentions by Guinness World Records thanks to the number of records they had sold.
Aside from the music, they were part of hugely lucrative merchandise deals, including ones with Mattel — which saw each of them recreated as a Barbie doll — as well as Samsung, Eylure false eyelashes and Sunsilk shampoo.
Sarah signed a £100,000 deal to model Ultimo lingerie in 2006 and, in 2007, the girls made a cameo appearance in the film, St Trinian’s.
Sarah continued to focus on acting when, in 2009, the group announced a hiatus to focus on solo projects, appearing in the 2009 BBC film Freefall alongside Dominic Cooper and with a starring role in St Trinian’s 2: The Legend Of Fritton’s Gold.
The price she paid for her success appears to have been lasting love. Her two- year relationship with mechanic John Turnbull didn’t survive her new-found fame.
She fell into the arms of fellow Popstars contestant Mikey Green in 2002, but within a couple of years was single again
During the years that followed she was briefly linked to the
likes of footballer George Best’s son Calum and Welsh T4 presenter Steve Jones. She also crossed romantic paths with Jennifer Lopez’s ex-husband Cris Judd and dated Hollywood actor Stephen Dorff.
In 2011, DJ Tom Crane, her boyfriend of four years, proposed in the Maldives. He ended things later that year, six months before their planned wedding.
By then Sarah’s concerned bandmates were urging her to get professional help with her drinking. Her party lifestyle had made her a tabloid favourite and she was photographed swigging from bottles of spirits and stumbling out of nightclubs worse for wear.
In October 2011 she attended a clinic, where she had treatment for addiction to alcohol and sleeping pills. She later admitted she had used alcohol to ‘numb’ the pain of her failed relationship with ex-fiancé Crane. ‘ The day I left for rehab I was in such a mess,’ she said in a December 2011 interview with Hello! magazine. ‘I’ve been told by those close to me that was when I hit my worst.’ Reflecting on that time, she said she was hoping for a more peaceful future. ‘I’ve turned 30 and, although there will always be a bit of the rock chick in me, I’m trying to embrace my softer, more feminine side. And I am trying really hard to be healthy.’ The years that followed Girls Aloud’s split in 2013 have been mixed for her. While her solo music career never really took off, she returned to television work, competing on the BBC gymnastics show Tumble in 2014 and in Celebrity MasterChef the following year. In 2016, she tore a ligament while filming the Channel 4 series, The Jump. That injury also forced her to withdraw from a UK tour of Ghost: The Musical amid reports, at the time, of an on- stage ‘meltdown’. She appeared to have made a come-back in 2017 when she won the final series of Celebrity Big Brother, but a threemonth relationship with fellow contestant, U.S. reality star Chad Johnson, ended because of the longdistance nature of their relationship. The past three years have been relatively quiet for Sarah.
SHE lost a close friend from college to breast cancer in 2018 and has lent her voice to cancer and mental health charity campaigns.
It was during her stint on Celebrity Big Brother that she admitted losing contact with her former bandmates and, after years of rumours of a feud, hinted at a fall-out with Cheryl.
She told fellow contestant Jemma Lucy: ‘I haven’t spoken to her in a while. Nothing lasts for ever.
‘We went through so much. even if we had fallen out, I’m sure it wouldn’t be a major deal in the future.’
Amid reports that she had turned her back on fame, last year she changed her Twitter bio to ‘Taking a timeout’.
She re- emerged online in May this year with a series of tweets. None of them gave any clue that she was already fighting breast cancer. It was diagnosed early this year and, devastatingly, two weeks ago she was told that it had spread to other parts of her body.
‘I’m doing my very best to keep positive,’ she wrote, after thanking the ‘wonderful NHS doctors and nurses’ who have been at her side throughout.
Amid an outpouring of good wishes yesterday, her former bandmates sent their love. Nadine Coyle wrote: ‘You have always been able to achieve miracles when needed!’
Sarah’s family, friends and fans will be praying fervently that she can do the same again.