A plea to Girls Aloud: Don't split up!

Boo to all you music snobs. Girls Aloud deliver great pop music, and that's what they're there for

From left: Nicola, Kimberley, Cheryl, Nadine and Sarah (Getty Images)

Girls Aloud may be performing together for the last time tonight as their tour draws to a close at the Liverpool Echo Arena.

After seeing their all-sequinned show at London’s O2, I turned to a friend hopefully and said: “Do you think we’ll get to see their 20 year tour?” But sadly, I don’t think the five shining pop stars will be talking that much history.

Kimberley has her dancing, Cheryl has her Will.i.am, Nicola has her own range of make-up for girls with pale skin…the thought that all five could continue into 2023 seems improbable.

But their latest tour did show that the gals can continue to make on-the-money pop songs, including “Something New” and “On the Metro” (whose trademark sing-along lyrics go “I left my heart at the disco, now I’m crying on the metro, wrote your name on the window”).

You can call them thick, you can call them cheesy, but you cannot mistake their biology: Girls Aloud know how to put on a good show.

From emerging from the arena roof on giant GIRLS ALOUD letters to “Sound of the Underground”, to disappearing through the stage with a poof of smoke in full-length glittery red dresses for finale song “The Promise”, the girls delivered pop so good you wanted to eat it.

And then those endless hits. You think they’ve just got “Biology”, “Sound of the Underground” and “Something Kinda Ooooh” until they play “Jump”, “Love Machine”, “Can’t Speak French”, “Whole Lotta History” and “Wake Me Up”.

I don’t know whether we’re allowed to reminisce about the early 2000s yet, but Girls Aloud take us back to a time when Gareth Gates was a household name, we’d never heard of Facebook and nobody moaned about the economy.

So here’s to another ten years Sarah, Nadine, Cheryl, Nicola and Kimberley. Go and live your solo careers for another decade, but please come back in 2023.