Former EastEnders actress Cheryl Fergison reckons the world has become too "cynical" as she reflects on the reaction to her relationship with a Moroccan toyboy.
The Heather Trott star has been with her other half Yassine el Jamouni for 11 years now and is as happy as ever.
The pair set tongues wedding when news of their romance broke over a decade ago and faced a barrage of "racism, sexism, ageism" as well as a load of half truths and completely false statements about their lives.
In an exclusive chat with the Mirror, the 56-year-old clears up a rumour that's been circling the couple for years - despite popular belief, her beloved husband is not, has never been, and has no immediate plans to become, a goatherd.
He's also not a gold-digger, like the sniggerers once cruelly suggested.
In reality, Cheryl has long stopped caring what the haters think about her love life.
She told the Mirror : "My son Alex asked his Alexa: 'Tell me a fact about Cheryl Fergison'"
"And Alexa goes: 'Cheryl Fergison is married to a goatherd from Morocco.' Why's that the first fact that comes up? And it's wrong!
"We don't have any goats. We've never had any goats near us! But that's the first thing people say. I find it really difficult to pin down why - There's racism, sexism, ageism - all the isms are there when people talk about our relationship.
"The world has become so cynical. People think it's got to be a con, it's got to be a problem. But I say, 'It hasn't got to be anything. Just stop it!'"
Cheryl rose to fame as kind-hearted, unlucky-in-love, George Michael obsessed and best friend to Shirley, the iconic Heather Trott.
She starred in the show for five years, from 2017, so when she fell for her second husband online in 2010, it hit the headlines.
She travelled to his hometown of Agadir, Morocco, and had married him by June 2011, prompting some to unfairly react as if gullible 'Hev' had just got herself in another jam.
"It seems to be quite cool for the men, like Mick Jagger, to date younger," says Cheryl. "And it seems okay for them to have someone else two years later. But people don't give any kudos to a woman dating someone younger, even though we've been together 11 years.
"Well we don't care. It really is absolutely water off a duck's back to us now. I just feel sorry for them, that they need to criticise our life."
Cheryl's much-loved character met her demise when she was smashed over the head with a photo frame by Ben Mitchell (a plotline she's still "unsure was a wise move" on the part of the writers).
But she will be back in the living rooms of fans very soon with Catherine Tait's new Netflix prison comedy, Hard Cell.
Cheryl shares her son Alex, 22, with ex husband, Afghani Jamshed Saddiqui.
Alex is about to graduate drama school, while she and hubby Yas, 37, have moved near the beach in Lancashire's Lytham St Anne's.
They regularly visit his parents in Agadir (armed with sweets and gifts for local hard-up families), and he'll also take the odd solo trip, like now for Ramadan.
"It's healthy to have the lives that we have. He's not by my side everywhere I go," says the 2012 Celebrity Big Brother star. "It works for us. I am me, Yas is Yas. Alex is Alex and we are a family."
She added: "He'll do romantic gestures but in his own time.
"He'll never be told to do something. So when he does do something it really comes from the heart.
"One year he was working backstage at my panto. The male lead told him it's tradition to buy me flowers for opening night. The night comes, and there's no flowers. Yas tells him: 'Nobody tells me when I buy my wife flowers.' Three weeks into the run, I get this giant bouquet. Yas says: 'See, everyone's flowers have died, but you have fresh ones.'
"He also has things made for me. They may be the smallest of gestures but I know it's a gesture from him and that's all that matters. I took a photo of 'our beach' in Morocco and he had it secretly mounted and framed and hung in his parents' house for when we stay there."
But it's memories that matter to her most. "I don’t believe in Valentine's Day. And I'm totally not a designer girl. Things can go up in flames. Memories can't," she says.
"So my family go places, we do things together, we laugh and cry. I don't want gifts for my birthday. I want them to spend the money on us doing things together so we can sit round with a cup of tea one day and go 'Do you remember when you...?'"
But only now, thanks to Catherine Tate and her new Netflix hit prison comedy, Hard Cell, might fans finally be able to separate Hev from the real Cheryl.
The show's already in the streamer's Top 10 and sees Cheryl playing a version of herself, helping inmates do a musical. She soon drops a very un-Heather C-bomb. "It was very liberating!" laughs Cheryl. "I want my own t-shirts with it on! People that know me, know I do have a bit of a potty mouth. But I normally have to reel it in."
Cheryl still has good pals on the Walford set.
She's godmother to Phil Mitchell legend Steve McFadden's children and she's still close to onscreen BFF Shirley, played by Linda Hendry.
But she's got some tips for the show makers after the soap got its lowest ever ratings last Autumn - 1.7m, compared to around 7m when she left.
"They need to bring it back down to earth a bit," she told the Mirror. "When the sensational stuff becomes like a movie, it becomes a bit like a blur. Arthur stealing the money, Den and Angie’s divorce papers, those were the hearts and lives of real people. The producers need to go out and talk to people. If you wanted explosions, you'd watch Fast and Furious."
There’s another thing she’d like to see more of on TV too: larger actors in three-dimensional roles.
"We can identify better when someone looks like you is represented," Cheryl says. "And we do have sex! People like to pretend that we just laugh around being jolly and eating, but we don't. I saw Pierce Brosnan's wife, who's bigger, and was like 'Yeah! Goooo on!'."
While not against plus-size body positive stars who've lost weight, that route is not for her. "I can understand the Rebel Wilsons and Adeles doing what they've done. It’s a health thing. Hats off to them.” she says.
"I thought I’d lost weight, then watched Hard Cell and thought ‘The chins are still there! What happened?.’ But I told myself ‘That’s just you, Cheryl, accept it.'
"I'd have to go on one of those major, major, complete extreme diets. The only thing I've not tried is surgery, and I'm not doing that. I don't really care that much.
"You see bigger people apologising in restaurants, or worrying people are looking at them. I'm always like 'Eat your food and enjoy it. If people look at me in restaurants, I think, 'What’s up? Are you jealous of the food on my plate?'"
Calling for better representation seems ironic, considering she was "big Fat Lesbian" Joanna in the now-controversial Little Britain. Yet, she stresses, the point of such OTT stereotypes is not to poke fun at those being lampooned, but those whose small-minded prejudices fuel such stereotypes. It's a tricky, nuanced area for a lot of comedy in this super-woke culture, including Tate's.
"I didn't have a problem with playing the Big Fat Lesbian," Cheryl admits. "But I think I can understand how other people might have."
She explains there was "no nastiness" in David Walliams and Matt Lucas, but does disagree with the use of blackface.
Cheryl, who divorced Jamshed in 2007, experienced racist abuse because of her husbands, while son Alex has been bullied for being half Afghani. "Shortly after 9/11, someone heard where Alex's dad was from - and they spat in his pram," she reveals.
Alex is close with his paternal grandparents who live in Holland, after fleeing Afghanistan's Taliban, long before the War On Terror. Alex, and therefore Cheryl, will only have distant relations in Afghanistan now, and don’t know how many.
But Alex and his mum feel passionately about helping refugees, and he’s been trying to help after the terrible scenes during the UK’s withdrawal last year.
First though, the pair are looking forward to a big family and friends night in, where they’ll all be “bingeing Mac n’ Cheese, cheesecake, and Hard Cell.”
Unbeknown to Catherine Tate when she wrote the part, Cheryl actually did do drama workshops in prisons for hardened felons, including convicted murderers, before she was famous.
"People were respectful to me, then you’d hear what they’d done," remembers Cheryl. "It’s weird because you felt less safe after you knew, but had been fine before. So I learned to judge people on how they treated me."
Her next job films in the summer but is still under wraps. After that she’s hoping to pitch a family travel show with her, Alex and Yas. "There's a lot of father and son ones - Bradley Walsh and his son, Martin Kemp and his,” she says. "But you don’t get many mother and son ones."
And in the far more distant future, Cheryl's dreaming of a retirement in her second home. Not Albert Square, Agadir. "That would be the dream," she says. "Who knows, maybe when I'm in my 80s, you'll find me on the beach in Agadir doing Henna, with Yas by my side."
Beats a retirement doing service washes in the Walford Launderette for sure.
Hard Cell is on Netflix now.
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