Girls Aloud: Nadine Coyle

Nadine, 23, with her endless limbs and sweet Irish singing voice, was born and brought up in divided Derry. 'There were certain places you didn't go on certain dates,' she says in the strongest Irish lilt I have ever heard. 'I just grew up thinking that's how it was for everyone. I knew people who were killed and I knew there were bomb scares but you just lived your life.'

Nadine is the middle of three girls. Her father used to run car dealerships and her mother is a powerful Catholic housewife who was convinced, when Nadine started with the band aged 17, that her daughter would be 'abused; that there would be sharks; that people would force cocaine on me. That was her idea of showbiz.'

By the time she got into the band, Nadine had already been a winner on the Irish equivalent of Popstars, and had been selected to be part of the band Six. She was disqualified when the producers realised she was 16 and the rules stipulated that contestants had to be 18. During the heats of Popstars: The Rivals, Nadine struggled with the dancing. Her legs are astounding but her arms are long, too, and even her fingers seem to go on forever. At 17, she just didn't know what to do with all this length and felt awkward even trying. 'It took me a long time because I thought I looked ridiculous and dancing should make you look graceful. I can see the point now but I still don't think ladies should show their armpits.'

Nadine is marvellously genteel while managing to be simultaneously kittenish. This won her the attention of Desperate Housewives heart-throb Jesse Metcalfe (the show's male pin-up who played Eva Longoria's teenage lover), who she met in a bar in Sydney and who she went out with for a couple of years until early this year when his drug problems and womanising became too much. 'I just thought, "I don't need this in my life,''' she says. 'I don't need to be on the front page talking about troubled this or troubled that. It all became a bit too Hollywood.' For six months she has been going out with New York Giants American football hero Jason Bell. 'He's a very nice man,' she says, 'and I love a pretty boy. He's very stable and very smart. He went to Harvard and now that he's going into retirement from football he's going to be a financial advisor. I'm so impressed.'

Nadine herself has got a bit of a reputation for being financially astute because she has invested so heavily. She has a house in Barnet, a couple of rentals in Ireland, an apartment in LA, a house in Orange County (bought with her family), a bar in Florida called O'Malley's and another called Nadine's Irish Mist. 'I'm a bit dangerous with money,' she says. 'If I have it, I'll spend it. A few times in recent years, just through buying so much stuff as investments and dropping big sums here and there, I have left myself without enough money to buy a packet of chewing gum.'

Starting with her mother, 'the one with the power', Nadine persuaded both parents, her sisters and brother-in-law and nephews to move to California and went halves with them on a huge house in a gated community where her mother can bustle about and her nieces and nephews can play on the beach. Nadine fell in love with LA four years ago when she went there for work. 'It was so tropical and yet Western,' she sighs in wonder. The rest of the clan moved there two years ago. Everyone is very happy, but it leaves Nadine with a hell of a commute to work in England. She is keen never to inflict her jet lag on the other girls.

While Sarah describes herself as 'hard work', Kimberley describes herself as 'the organiser', Cheryl describes herself as 'the mother', and Nicola describes herself as 'the baby', Nadine says that she is 'the singer', which seems to be coming at the group from a less emotional and more professional standpoint. But then Nadine has the most stable family life so maybe she just needs the other girls less. 'I do most of the singing,' she says, 'always have done.' She would tend to go into the studio with the producer before the rest of the band and sing the demos to see which ones worked best. 'I can work at a quicker pace and just get stuff down.' Nadine, for all her floaty Irish charm, is a lot savvier than she seems. She is perhaps the only one who might be a solo artist waiting to blossom. Trouble is, I think the others know it, too.

Hair by Lisa Laudet at Frank agency. Make-up by Liz Martin at Naked.
Fashion assistants: Orsolya Szabo and Amy Li

Photographed in the Shooting Gallery at the luxurious Haymarket Hotel
1 Suffolk Place, London SW11 4BP, 020 7470 4000; www.haymarkethotel.com. Rooms start from £250 plus VAT.