Cheryl Tweedy has blossomed into one of the UK’s most beloved celebrities, her name now synonymous with success and fame. However, the journey to becoming a household name was far from glamorous.

Before the spotlight found her, Cheryl’s upbringing in Newcastle was a world apart from her current lifestyle. Raised on a council estate, she grew up with her siblings—Andrew, Garry, Gillian, and Joe—under the care of their mother, Joan Callaghan, and father, Garry Tweedy.

This week, a stark reminder of her contrasting past emerged when reports surfaced about her brother Andrew. At 45, he was seen in a troubling state, reportedly begging for money and residing in a tent outside a supermarket.

Eyewitnesses have claimed that Andrew spends his time outside Morrisons in Jarrow, South Tyneside, hoping for the generosity of shoppers to provide him with food.

Cheryl, now with a substantial net worth estimated at £30 million, continues to face reminders of challenges from her past, including the shadows cast by familial struggles and personal history.

While Cheryl now boasts an impressive net worth of £30million, her drug past still casts a shadow on her family. 

Cheryl recalled in her 2012 autobiography My Story, how she felt ‘peer pressured’ into doing drugs.

She wrote: ‘Most people saw me as Goody Two-Shoes because of my singing and dancing, and I didn’t want to stand out anymore.

‘For the same reason, it wasn’t long before I smoked weed too. Everybody did it, and I gave in to peer pressure at a party in someone’s house one weekend.

‘”Go on, Cheryl, it won’t kill you,” one of the lads said, and so I puff on a joint.

‘I didn’t particularly like it, but after that I started smoking more and more.’ 

‘I smoked from about the age of 13 because everyone did it,’ she added.

Elsewhere in the book, Cheryl opened up about a time when her sister Gillian encouraged her to ‘have a smoke’.

She wrote: She was 19 and had left home by now and moved into a flat of her own, but she was in the kitchen of our house at Langhorn Close, smoking weed, with my mam standing right next to her.

‘Mam knew Gillian smoked weed and just let her get on with it, saying: “You’re old enough to make your own decisions”.

‘But I was four years younger, and I would never have dreamed of smoking in front of my mam.

‘I started shaking my head and looking at Gillian as if to say, “Are you mad?”

‘”Go on,” my sister said cheekily. “Don’t pretend you don’t smoke it, Chery. I know you do.”

‘I was mortified, but mam just looked at me and said very calmly, “If you’re going to do it, Cheryl, I’d rather know, and I’d rather you did it here.”

‘Gillian passed me the joint, and I had a smoke. I didn’t enjoy it, and I was furious with Gillian, but at least we all knew where we stood.’

For Cheryl, weed almost became a form of escapism during her teen years.

It eventually led her into her first relationship with a guy named Dave, who was ‘quite a bit older than me’ at 15.

After finding out one of her friends had a one-night stand with Dave, she fell into a state of depression.

She wrote: ‘The betrayal was just unbearable. I didn’t know how I was going to cope with it, and the truth is, I didn’t.’

The next morning, I got up late, moped around the house and smoked weed before I’d eaten anything. It sounds so disgusting to me, but that’s what I did.

She recalled: ‘I literally turned into a depressed teenager overnight. 

‘At first, I couldn’t bear to tell my mam what Dave had done to me because I knew it would have devastated her too. 

‘Instead, I bottled everything up, smoking more and more weed every day.’

The singer was given a prescription for beta-blockers to help cope with her depression.

‘I was actually suffering from clinical depression. Apparently, there was a history of it in the family,’ she wrote. 

Cheryl eventually found comfort in another guy, Jason Mack, whom she dated for 18 months before she was chosen to be in Girls Aloud.

Jason was 27 at the time, while she was only 16.

The pair built their relationship on ‘sharing sob stories, smoking some weed, and just chilling out together.’

While their romance quickly progressed into them moving into a flat together, Jason’s struggle with drugs became more apparent for the singer.

Cheryl recalled: ‘One night Jason and I stayed the night at my mam’s house, and when we got into bed, he suddenly started kicking the blankets off, really violently.

‘I didn’t know what was happening, but I was sure his behaviour had to be linked to hard drugs.’

Cheryl explained how she ended up calling his brother, but Jason twisted the story and accused the singer of ‘being on pills’.

She wrote: ‘He messed with my head so much I didn’t know what to believe, even though I look back now and think it was so obvious he was cold-turkeying that night, he hadn’t had his fix of heroin and was experiencing withdrawal symptoms.’ 

The singer decided to stop smoking weed by herself as she ‘didn’t know if it was ‘making me paranoid or not, and I knew I had to be normal so I could work out what the hell the truth was with Jason’.

To prove she was not going mad, Cheryl decided to check the pocket of Jason’s jacket while he was at work.

‘I found a yellow plastic capsule from the inside of a chocolate Kinder egg, and in the middle of it were loads of wraps of heroin.’

The singer ended her relationship with Jason, who has since gone on to admit he put his younger girlfriend ‘through hell’ due to his crippling drug addictions.

‘When I first met her I was doing a lot of cocaine,’ he told the Daily Mirror. ‘Some days I’d blow £200 on the stuff, and I’d be drinking bottles of Bud from 8am until I crashed out at God knows when.’

However, he said the star would sit with him ‘for hours’ trying to talk him out of buying drugs.

After splitting with Jason, Cheryl was catapulted into the limelight when she auditioned for Popstars: The Rivals.

Since then, Cheryl became strongly against drug use after losing her childhood friend to a heroin overdose in 2005.

Budding footballer John Courtney was just 21 years old when he died. Close friend 

Cheryl later said: ‘It put me off drugs for life. That nightmare devastated all John’s family and friends.’

While the singer has put her use of drugs far in the past, her estranged brother Andrew has been spotted in a tent outside a supermarket.

The singer is said to have made numerous attempts to get him clean, including funding a £20,000 stint in rehab.

Her brother was first discovered to be homeless in 2021 with new photos this week showing him living outside a Morrisons in Jarrow, South Tyneside.

According to reports Andrew is said to spend his day hoping the shop’s customers will buy him food.

He said: ‘I have been in rehab three times but I’m not going back. I am one of those people that take one step forward and ten steps back. Every time.’

Andrew, who has a history with crime, was in court last month for being drunk and disorderly outside Morrisons.

According to The Sun, it is reported that Andrew told the officers when they arrived to ‘F*** off’, and added, ‘What you going to do?’

The Daily Mail has contacted Cheryl’s representative for comment.

Speaking to The Sun in 2021, Cheryl’s embattled brother said the singer probably had no idea that he was homeless.

Andrew said: ‘This is what I’m f***ing living like. I’ve been begging here for more than three months and it’s something that has really broken my heart.

‘I’ve got so much f***ing pride. With the family I’ve got, I shouldn’t be here. It’s horrible.

‘None of them have contacted me. Even though Cheryl’s not helping me, she’s still my family. She probably won’t even know I’m on the streets, I don’t blame her at all. This is the lowest I’ve ever been.’

According to newspaper, a tearful Andrew was discovered sleeping alongside bottles of urine and empty cans of beer in his makeshift home in northern England. He also shared the tent with a homeless friend.

Andrew – who has a son – revealed he was forced to live on the streets when his relationship broke down earlier that year.

Cheryl’s troubled brother has had a history with crime and has appeared in court more than 50 times.

Andrew long continued to battle drug and alcohol addiction, despite numerous help attempts by his younger sister Cheryl. It’s unclear what Andrew’s circumstances are currently.

The Girls Aloud star has never publicly mentioned her heartache regarding Andrew, but he has acknowledged her unquestionable support on multiple occasions.

Speaking from his jail cell in 2008, he told the Sunday Mirror: ‘Cheryl wants to help me – but I’m too far gone. I know I’m breaking her heart, but I’m not strong enough to sort myself out.’

‘It tears me up to think I’m causing my little sister so much pain. I’ve told Cheryl she should be ashamed of me, but she says she loves me and she’ll never give up on me.’

She was said to have been ‘crippled by worry’ about her older brother and was spotted making covert jail visits as he served time for a violent robbery.

‘She came on her own,’ said Andrew. ‘She looked so sad and so tired, totally different to how she looks on TV or singing on stage… It broke my heart to see her so cut up.’

According to reports at the time, Cheryl held her brother’s hand during a prison visit and begged him to let her and former husband Ashley Cole pay for his rehab.

But the Newcastle native rejected the offer. He acknowledged that she was behind him ‘every step of the way’ but refused the help because he was scared of letting her down.

While brutally honest about his own failings, he said in 2008 that he hopes one day be able to get his life back on track and repay Cheryl for all of her kindness.