Early Life
Nicola Roberts was born on 5 October 1985 in Stamford, Lincolnshire when her mother was 17. At the time of her birth her father was working for the RAF and the resulting pay led to financial struggles which saw her father move to work for company Ford whilst her mother became a photographer to help the family monetary problems. Roberts grew up in a "rough" council estate; despite this she never felt threatened but expressed concern with her younger siblings exploring the area as they "probably wouldn't come back". Despite a history of drugs in the estate she called the situation a minority and found that estates in 2010 were much worse than her own. Aged 11 Roberts and her family moved from her council estate into a middle class area which Roberts believed was "too posh" for her and she found herself returning to the council estate to spend time with "mischievous" children from lower-class backgrounds. In school Roberts found herself shying away, in contrast to her home life where she was outgoing, even gaining the nickname Cilla from her family after singer Cilla Black. Academically Roberts performed well, leaving school with ten GCSEs, but she declared her dislike with school and began discussing a musical career which led her to work with several girl groups recording demo tracks in several cases. Roberts acknowledged she had always wanted to be a singer and had been entering competitions and auditions with her father accompanying her and gaining support from other family members also. In an interview with Closer magazine, Roberts spoke about how she started off her musical career at a local disco, as part of a girl band called ‘The 5 Musketeers’
"Every week before I went on stage I used to go to the toilet, to the same cubicle, and pray, just ask God to please let me have this. Even though I was confident in my singing ability, and I knew I had a stronger voice than most at the time same time I still had a little bit of insecurity because I'd been told Louis didn't want me. I was never in the bottom two, though, and the producers told me I always came in the top two or three in terms of votes each week, which was great."
Roberts describing her time in the show Popstars The Rivals and her successes within the show.Read more about this topic: Nicola Roberts
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