We’ve all lost our passport at some point or another, haven’t we? Nadine Coyle certainly has and it’s not a moment she’s likely to live down anytime soon. “When people see my passport, I think it’s triggering for them!” she tells GAY TIMES, reflecting on the iconic Irish Popstars scene in which she got her own birthday wrong back in 2001. “I’ve literally had people gasp in airports because they’ve seen my passport. They’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s the passport!’”

Just one year later, she would go on to join Girls Aloud, which would eventually become one of the most successful bands the UK has ever seen, with a whopping 21 top 10 hits and four number one singles under their belt. The group’s legendary debut album, Sound of the Underground, recently turned 20 – something that Nadine finds hard to get her head around. “I was 17 at that time,” she explains. “It’s crazy to think that it’s been two decades and that it’s still able to go and we’re still able to do so many amazing things with it. It’s so, so great.”

Since the disbanding of Girls Aloud in 2013, Nadine has released a solo album, EP and solidified her legacy as a gay icon through various appearances at Pride celebrations and, perhaps more importantly, the numerous memes she has spawned. “I am aware that there are multiple memes,” she says. “Am I an actual meme? Like, am I an actual walking meme? A lot of stuff that I do seems to turn [into a meme], I don’t know! I am just innocently, humbly minding my own business and then these things just take on a life of their own, I think.”

One thing Nadine didn’t do, much to the dismay of fans everywhere, was make a cameo in Derry Girls. “It would have been iconic,” she shares, explaining that the show is based on the school she attended as a teenager. “We had the same green uniforms, we had a nun, Sister Christopher, as the principal [and] we got the yellow buses to school,” she continues. “It was based on that, that whole experience. So when you look at the actual Derry Girls, that was me and my friends running around Derry going to that school!”

Here, Nadine talks to GAY TIMES about all things Girls Aloud, her love of Drag Race UK and her upcoming headline show at the Clapham Grand…

Read the whole interview here: https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/originals/nadine-coyle-girls-aloud-gay-times-interview/