Aalreet, pet, a girl from The Toon is set to conquer America – as long as she keeps her mouth shut. Steve Pratt breaks through the language barrier to find out if Cheryl Cole can succeed.

SHE wore a broad smile on her face beneath the huge Seventies-style Farrah Fawcett hairdo. She looked stunning in a bright orange Oscar de la Renta top paired with Diane von Furstenberg purple trousers and turquoise belt.

And then she opened her mouth to speak: “Aalreet, Ahm Cheryl, an Ahm frem The Toon.

Ahm git worried tha ne-one will be able te understand a word Ah syah on The X Factor.”

Welcome to America, Cheryl Cole – and thanks to The English To Geordie translator at geordie.org.uk for the subtitles.

Everyone knows that Cole’s from Newcastle, so there was the language barrier to overcome.

Would it be a rapid case of “auf wiedersehen, pet” as the Americans, who speak their own form of English, tried to guess what she was saying?

She may finally have been confirmed as a judge on the US edition of talent show The X Factor, but fears remained that no one would understand a word she was staying in her thick Geordie accent.

During the months of speculation about whether she’d join Simon Cowell on the new US show the main talking point was not how much she’d been paid but how much she’d be understood.

There were stories she was sent to a voice coach to iron out an accent that Americans might find impenetrable. Something to do with her focusing on vowel pronunciation and vocabulary. In other words, make her accent softer and ban Geordie expressions.

The former Girls Aloud singer remained adamant she wouldn’t change for her new audience. “Nivvor. Aa’d be crucified weor Ahm frem if Ah tried te change the way Ah speak,” she declared.

Or, “Never. I would be crucified where I’m from if I tried to change the way I speak,” if you’re still struggling with Geordie.

She’s not the first Brit to get a job talking on US television, but the regional accent is out of the ordinary. Talk show host Piers Morgan and presenter Cat Deeley both sound more how Americans expect us Brits to speak. More Queen’s English, you might say. They’re okay with standard received pronunciation and cockney (it never held Michael Caine back, did it?), but the further North you go, the harder it is to be understood.

COLE isn’t the first North-East personality to find the accent is being put on the way she talks. It’s claimed that viewers of BBC America wanted subtitles for shows featuring Geordie legends Robson Green and Ant and Dec so they could follow what they were saying.

When the duo presented a US game show, the story goes that an interpreter was employed during filming to press a button every time the pair said something that he feared audiences wouldn’t understand.

Susan Boyle was a hit on Britain’s Got Talent and an internet phenomenon, but her conversation was hard to follow. So she was subtitled when she appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show for fear that viewers wouldn’t understand her strong Scottish accent.

The following year another BGT contestant, 81-year-old singer Janey Cutler, from Lanarkshire, had 100,000 hits on You Tube, but presenters on CBS News couldn’t understand a word she was saying when they interviewed her. “I’m just getting a translation right now,”

giggled a male presenter.

Backing for Cole’s accent has come from Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger, one of the co-presenters on the American X Factor.

She described Cole’s accent as “charming”

and more “interesting” than her own.

“It probably sounds a lot more fun and interesting to listen to her than me do my Southern slang,” she told Heart Radio.

Cole could even make a positive out of what others see as a negative by using her Geordie accent to win over viewers. Studies have shown the accent is considered friendly, honest and generally attractive.

She should simply be herself, maybe avoid using local expressions like pet and babe, but just let her natural charm shine through.

She has the confidence to carry it off, saying that Americans can always understand her. “I’ve been here a lot. I’ve got a lot of American friends and we have the odd moment where they’re like, ‘what? – what did that mean?’ – you know, a phrase,” she said, arriving at the first X Factor audition in LA earlier this week.

“But I think it’s going to be something people get used to. And I’m proud of my success.”

She didn’t dodge the much-debated issue when she was introduced for the first time as Simon Cowell welcomed the new judges. “You might have to bear with me on the accent,” she says, adding “I hope you are all looking forward to getting to know me.”

In which case it probably wasn’t a good move to tell one of the first contestants with a strong US accent that she thought she was “singing in a foreign language”.

Perhaps we should let Cole have the final word. “Ahm so excited. Ah absolutely love finding new talent an helping them grow, so this is git exciting fre me te tyek port in,” she says about her X Factor role.

Or, to put it in English, “I’m so excited. I absolutely love finding new talent and helping them grow, so this is very exciting for me to take part in.”