Sarah Harding – Fabulous

‘Yes, I’ve had something done. It was a mistake. One I will not make again’
Her face has been the subject of speculation for months. Now, for the first time, Sarah Harding tells Beth Neil why she decided to fight the ageing process so young
Sarah Harding has arrived armed with cake.

Not just any cake, but a deliciously gooey ginger and lemon number she’s made from scratch, all by her lovely self. Move over Nigella. The girl who was once the wildest party girl in pop has gone domestic goddess on us – and judging by the reactions of all those devouring the goods, it’s a role she’s fulfilling rather well.

“Is it all right?” she asks, a little anxiously.

OMG. It’s so much more than all right.

“Thank God! I just thought I’d bring something along for everyone. There’s a load of treacle, butter and muscovado sugar in there. I know, I know, all the bad things! But I just couldn’t resist and I absolutely love cooking.

“Honestly, my favourite birthday present last year was a food processor from Tom. I get to be like Jamie Oliver and ‘whaz’ things up!”

She’s in excitable spirits today, is Girls Aloud’s Miss Harding. Newly engaged to DJ Tom Crane, 31, she’s glowing with happiness and can’t wipe the smile off her face whenever her fiancé’s name crops up. In fact, the 29 year old’s mood is only dampened when the subject of cosmetic surgery raises its (wrinkle-free) head.

Just a few months ago, paparazzi pictures captured a very different-looking Sarah, her polished, drum-tight skin, arched eyebrows and suspiciously plump lips sparking much debate. So, what’s the story?

At first she’s wary about opening up and, perhaps understandably, attempts to deflect the question.

“I know people are going to scrutinise me because of what I do for a living,” she says. “But it’s a very personal thing. I’m not against surgery. Each to their own.”

Before she found fame, Sarah had corrective surgery on her nose after breaking it in an accident, but are there any other procedures she’d like to admit to?

“Put it this way, I wouldn’t do anything permanent to my face. Ever.”

She wiggles her eyebrows up and down to demonstrate that she does indeed have movement, expression and creases.

“See?” she says. “No Botox, thank you very much.”

All the evidence certainly suggests she’s telling the truth. But what about those lips? Still looking full today, although not to the extremes of a few months ago – are they really all her own?

“Erm…” she stalls. “They are now…” Sarah squirms, clearly uncomfortable. “OK,” she says finally, “let’s put this to bed.”

She takes a deep breath. “It’s not something I’m going to be trying again, or anything I would recommend to anyone else. But, yeah, around Christmas I got a little bit experimental and decided to have some filler in my lips. Clearly, that was a big mistake.”

A mistake that stemmed from Sarah’s worries about getting older.

“It was a case of approaching my 30s and not feeling very confident about that,” she says. “I think most women have those insecurities as they head towards 30. It’s something that was on my mind a lot.

“And they do say if you’re going to have anything done, that’s about the right age to do it. I always thought prevention was better than cure. But it didn’t work out for me. I was very silly. It was a silly thing to do.”

She buries her head in her hands, thoroughly embarrassed as she recalls the day those first pictures of her new pout emerged. “It was a really distressing time,” she says, genuinely wounded. “I had a bad reaction to the filler, which made it worse. Thankfully, my lips have gone back down again now and everything’s OK. I’ve always said I’ll try anything once, but I’ve definitely learned my lesson now. I think it’s very easy to go too far.”

That’s not to say Sarah has given up fighting the ageing process. She has regular £120 non-surgical facelifts at luxury spa resort Champneys, which are said to smooth and sculpt skin via mini electrodes.

“The treatment is by a brand called Carita and it’s just amazing how your face tightens,” she says. “Your eyebrows are lifted and your eyes seem more open. It’s incredible. And micro-dermabrasion is fantastic as well. Ooh, and I love a collagen wave facial!”

Sarah’s relaxed again now and laughing, clearly relieved to have held her hands up. And she really doesn’t have anything to worry about looks-wise.

She’s strikingly beautiful with clear skin and a face full of personality. How disheartening then, that even a girl like her struggles with low self-esteem at times. And although she’s becoming increasingly body confident, she’s not yet entirely happy with her size-8 figure.

Most women have insecurities as they head towards 30

“I’m getting there,” she says softly. “I’m working out with an amazing trainer and feel so strong and healthy at the moment. Working out is good for my own mental wellbeing – if I look good then I feel good.

“There was a time a few years ago when I got too thin. But we were touring, I was constantly on the go and dancing every night. I’m naturally a curvy girl. And if I train twicea week I can more or less eat anything!”

Sarah might still be learning to love herself, but there’s one person who adores her just as she is.

Her fiancé Tom proposed during a romantic New Year break in the Maldives, after nearly four years together, and Sarah is now busy planning what’s sure to be a rock ‘n’ roll wedding.

Their relationship is fast and furious, characterised by almighty rows and steamy reconciliations.

“We’re both very outspoken and fiery, which means there’s plenty of passion. We bicker and we row and it’s always feisty with us. But then the making up can be feisty, too!” she says.

“Tom’s a cheeky chappy, a comedian, and we bounce off each other. We knew each other for about six months as mates before we got together romantically. I wasn’t looking for a relationship. It wasn’t until I’d heard he’d met someone else that it dawned on me I’d fallen for him.

“I was like: ‘Nooooo! You can’t have met someone!’ He told me he’d only been on one date and so I said: ‘OK, that’ll be the first and last’.”

Sarah, who removes her beautiful sapphire and diamond engagement ring before the shoot, entrusting its safekeeping to her make-up artist, insists she and Tom haven’t booked a venue or set a date yet. She rubbishes reports that it’s happening this summer at Berkshire’s Cliveden House, as well as the rumours of a Las Vegas hen do and Ibizan honeymoon.

“We’re still looking at venues – we haven’t chosen anywhere. There’s no date and we haven’t booked a honeymoon. And Las Vegas? WTF?! I don’t think my mum would appreciate a Vegas hen do. It’s all very early stages still.”

All the same, when she spots a very wedding-like ballgown on the clothing rail she asks if she can try it on for a giggle before posing for a picture and texting it to Tom. She’s fun, playful and a ball of energy as she bounds around our shoot location (the house where The King’s Speech was filmed and, funnily enough, the video for Girls Aloud’s Can’t Speak French), gulping down a Starbuck’s Frappuccino and chatting to everyone on the shoot.

“I’m like a hyperactive puppy,” she explains. “I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder when I was very young and my concentration span is terrible. That’s why it’s lovely to live in the country where I can recharge my batteries.”

Children are on Sarah’s agenda, although not immmediately.

“God, yeah! Totally! But hopefully not before the wedding. I don’t want to be a shotgun bride.”

When the little ones do come along, she’s hoping to give them a more settled upbringing than the one she had herself. Her parents split during her early teens (she’s still estranged from her father John Hardman, 56, and recently claimed that he was dead to her, accusing him of trying to sell pictures of her as a child to the press). Her mum Marie, 67, moved the family from Surrey to Manchester where Sarah found it difficult to adjust, attending several schools before leaving without qualifications.

“I think it would be nice to find one pre-school, one primary and one high school for my kids when I have them. There wouldn’t be all the disruption I had. I didn’t have the most stable of upbringings and found the move north very unsettling. I was 14 and it was tough having to integrate into a new school and make new friends.

“I think it’s one of the reasons I love being with Tom’s family so much. We have these big family days together, which is really nice because I didn’t really have that while I was growing up.”

I think I’ve matured. Well, a little bit…

After quitting school, Sarah was determined to make it in the music industry, working a series of dead-end day jobs and performing in social clubs by night. By the time Popstars: The Rivals came along in 2002, she’d already been grafting as a singer for around four years.

“Would I have made it without that show? I dunno. But I’d definitely still be trying. I could never have done anything else,” she says.

She couldn’t have predicted, though, that along with Cheryl Cole, 27, Nadine Coyle, 25, Kimberley Walsh, 29, and Nicola Roberts, 25, she would go on to become Britain’s biggest ever girl band with six best-selling albums and 20 consecutive top 10 singles to their name.

Sarah, we know, was tagged the party animal, the blonde bombshell who loved a drink, regularly snapped staggering out of nightclubs. But times change.

Since moving to the country two years ago and enjoying an extended break from the band, Sarah has undergone a transformation. These days you’re more likely to find her in a pair of wellies than sky-scraper Louboutins. And she prefers cosy nights in with Tom and their animals to all-day benders swigging whisky from the bottle.

“I’ve matured,” she says. “Well, a little bit. I’m very loud and bubbly in one respect, but I’m very homely, calm and soft in the other. I’ve got two very different sides.

“When I’m at home, that’s my quiet time when I chill out. And when I’m out it’s a case of unleash the beast!” A flash of the old Sarah, there. “I’ve got loads of regrets,” she adds. “Most I probably shouldn’t tell you about. There was a time I thought I was Liam bloody Gallagher. I had this loose-cannon image.

“I’ve never been an angel, but I played up to that role because that’s what people expected of me. I love to be the extrovert, but it was more the power of suggestion than anything else. The whole swigging from a whisky bottle thing – I mean, I don’t even like whisky. I hate whisky!”

The boozy reputation hasn’t done her career any harm though. And she’s remained popular with girls and guys alike – no mean feat. “As long as people don’t think of me as a lush then that’s OK,” she says. “I like to be the life and soul and I think people know me as that.”

There was a time I thought I was Liam Gallagher

During the two-year hiatus from Girls Aloud, Sarah has thrown herself into solo projects. She picked up her acting career, which began with 2007 movie St Trinian’s, by starring in 2009 TV drama Freefall. She’s also opened a nightclub, Kanaloa in London, and has been “dabbling in” writing music.

And later this month she makes her debut as a television presenter, hosting the revamped series of Sky Living’s Dating In The Dark. The show does what it says on the tin: guy meets girl for a date, but without the lights.

“Music is my first love, but this was a new challenge,” she says. “I was petrified about taking it on, but it looked like fun. It’s funny to see people smooching away in the dark thinking they’ve met the love of their life, and then the lights go on and they’re like: ‘Oh s**t!’

“I feel like the new Cilla!”

Next year is the 10th anniversary of Girls Aloud, so surely the band will do something to mark the occasion? But Sarah’s keeping schtum, albeit with a very knowing look.

“We haven’t got anything confirmed, though we’re all talking. It would be nice and appropriate to do something next year. That’s all I can say right now.”

She does, though, scotch whispers that only four of them will reunite, with Cheryl’s work commitments ruling her out. “If we get back together to do anything, it will be the five of us,” says Sarah, adamantly. “No question.”

Her blue eyes, all the more piercing since she dyed her blonde locks dark brown, make firm contact. She means it.

“The general consensus is that I should go back to being blonde,” she says of her hair.

“I tend to agree… I’ve never been this dark before so, yeah, I think that I’ll go back.”

Outside, Sarah’s car is waiting to drive her to Buckinghamshire and she’s looking forward to getting home and having a meal with Tom. She jokes that they’ll probably fight over who gets to cook, before reeling off her speciality recipe – ham soaked in red wine and spices, glazed in redcurrant jelly and ground cinnamon.

“And my banoffee pie’s not bad either!” she adds with a grin. She might still be capable of burning the candle at both ends, but equally, Sarah is utterly convincing when she says she’s happiest beavering away in her kitchen making ginger and lemon cake to die for.

“I’m my own person now, I’m not a character any more,” she says. “This is me, I’m nearly 30 and it’s time to grow up.”

Sarah presents the new series of Dating In The Dark, starting Tuesday May 17 at 9pm on Sky Living.

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/notw/exclusive/e_fabulous/1289653/Yes-Ive-had-something-done-It-was-a-mistake-One-I-will-not-make-again.html