After splitting with Jason, Cheryl was catapulted into the limelight when she auditioned for Popstars: The Rivals. And she picked up a new man on the way when she started dating fellow contestant Jacob Thompson during the final round of auditions. "I thought he was lovely," Cheryl said at the time. "His eyelashes are amazing and I love his light eyes and dark skin. He's got a fantastic body." She even reportedly took Jacob to visit her family home in Newcastle. However, the pair stayed at her friends' houses as she didn't want to sleep with her new beau at her mum's place. “My heart was beating 10 to the dozen. Her body was beautiful. She’s petite and perfectly formed like a little China doll," said Jacob of the first time they made love. She blamed her hectic schedule for ending the romance, but Jacob, now a carpet fitter on £20,000 a year, was less than complimentary. When Cheryl became an X Factor judge in 2008, he told the Daily Mirror that at a party to celebrate Girls Aloud's new-found fame she cruelly dismissed him by asking what he was doing there."Our relationship was over and we never spoke again," he said. "Weeks afterwards, friends in the music industry told me Cheryl’s PR people had told her to ‘dump the boyfriend’."