Cheryl gives Ashley the boot after meeting

Cheryl gives Ashley the boot after meeting
Cheryl gives Ashley the boot after meeting (Image credit: Anwar Hussein/PA Photos)

Cheryl Cole has met with her estranged husband Ashley for the first time since announcing their separation - but threw him out after just 20 minutes. The X Factor judge - who split from the Chelsea star after it was revealed he had been repeatedly unfaithful - reportedly refused to speak to him when he turned up at their Surrey home at short notice on Friday night. And according to the Sunday Mirror he was given just a few minutes to pack some belongings before being shown the door by her mother Joan. "Cheryl was furious that he just turned up and was even more angry when he thought they would be able to talk," an insider told the paper. "She's sick to death of being labelled a pushover. She's going to talk to him on her terms when she wants to. She was livid that he turned up at the house with hardly any warning." Meanwhile a source close to Ashley told the News Of The World: "He knows turning around this situation is going to be very difficult and could even be impossible. "The realisation of that has hit him really hard this weekend." However the paper reports that Cheryl - who is suffering from bronchitis and cancelled a planned appearance on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross at the weekend - has still not decided whether to call in divorce lawyers. "She can hardly leave her bed at the moment, she's so sick," a friend said. "Everything's caught up with her. She just wants to recover and shut out the world for a bit."

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.