X Factor 2010: What Really Happened When Gypsy Cher Lloyd ‘Bullied’ Ophelia At School
X FACTOR 2010: Cher Lloyd is now a hate figure. The Sun says she’s a “VIOLENT BULLY”. Can this be our Cher, the young lovely who is a dead ringer for Dot Cotton Team America action figure? Surely not?!
Poor Cher burdened with a name that to all the world looks like an abbreviated form of Cheryl. But Andrew Parker claims Cher is a “merciless bully” in her own right.
Meet Ophelia Blakeway. Yep, that’s right… Ophelia. Cher, meet Ophelia. Ophalia, meet Cher. Everyone is named after a star of stage and screen in Malvern where the pair went to school. Just in the girls’ class alone there is a Dunaway, Romeo, Van Damme, Lord Olivier, Godot and plenty of Violet Elizabeth Botts.
(Although, apparently, short for Cheryl, but short for Chert, a fine-grained silica-rich microcrystalline, also-known-as ’Malvern Gold’.)
Says Ophelia (no nun herself):
“I want people to hear the truth about what Cher was like. Everyone is making her sound like an angel but she caused me a lot of pain.”
The voice right? That singing?
“I’ve had problems ever since. I’m still trying to get over depression. I had counselling, I cried, I was self-harming. It’s not nice because I have the scars.”
Can telling the tabloids everything she knows and sticking the knife into Cher help Ophelia feel better? Can this make the “verbal torture” go away?
And then a whisper. Come closer. Closer…
And she also told how Cher, who comes from Romany stock, cruelly homed in on her personal heartache.
A gypsy? Is Cher’s ethnicity relevant? It’s seems an unnecessary detail to include, especially in an anti-Cher story. The Sun has not mentioned this detail before now. So, why mention it now? Ophelia goes on:
“My mum left me when I was three. It was always a weak point and she said I must have been a disappointment to my mum. She would say, ‘She’s abandoned you’ and ‘Who would want to raise a girl like you?’ It would be in front of my friends and hers.”
Too, too cruel. What then?
“She walked over and ripped at my hair – grabbed hold of it because I had a bun. I was so shocked. She yanked it so my head went down as if it was a warning to say she had power. I backed off and she called me a waste of space.”
How can Ophelia be a waste of space when she’s on the Sun’s front page? Waste of space? Never! This is a great use of space and well worth the 30p it costs Sun readers to read about Ophelia having her hair pulled. (Read Anorak, tabloid fans – its free!)
On a brighter note for Cher fans, Ophelia says:
“What people are saying about her being fragile is nonsense. She’s stubborn and strong.”
Hurrah! You go, Cher. As she says:
“I’m not a one-trick pony. I’ve got plenty of tricks up my sleeve. So watch this space really.”
Magic, rap and a bit of hair pulling. Cher is one woman cabaret…
READ: How The X Factor And Sony BMG Fixed It For Katie Waissel, aka Katie Vogel
READ: The X Factor’s Big PR Stunt: Why Gamu Nhengu Is The New Wispa Bar
Posted: 8th, October 2010 | In: TV & Radio Comments (12) | TrackBack | Permalink
