From Girls Aloud's debut album onwards, Coyle sang all the initial vocals in the studio, at the express wish of their producer, Brian Higgins of Xenomania. "From day one. Well, maybe not day one, but definitely week two. And that's how it worked from then onwards. The girls just left me to it." She nods. "And then they would come in and do their parts, and they would have their holidays."

So Girls Aloud don't always make records together? "Oh yes. We were very, very separate. We didn't know it any other way." Coyle speaks in the past tense about the group all the time – although she bats off questions about whether they have split, or are splitting. "After the last record, it was the right time to go and do our own individual things, and then come back together when the time was right, if the time was right." Even when she is pushed, this is as far as she will go.

However, she brims with enthusiasm for her favourite Girls Aloud records – their second album, What Will the Neighbours Say?, and their 2007 single, Can't Speak French. She liked dressing up in Marie Antoinette frocks for that video, she laughs, although "all that stuff" is far less important than the music.

Labels: Girls Aloud, Nadine Coyle