She was the 16-year-old who found fame on the original reality-TV talent show. And then came the hateful digs that would punctuate her career with Girls Aloud. Hugh Montgomery meets Nicola Roberts, the porcelain pop princess whose first solo album should finally silence the critics.

Never let it be said that Nicola Roberts doesn’t do smiles. Over the course of our time together she runs through a veritable repertoire of them. There’s the demure simper with which she greets me in a London members’ club. The excited grin when discussing “the music”. The knowing half-smile that reproves a mischievous comment. The conspiratorial smirk after her PR comes over and hurries me to wrap things up. And then a beaming flash of the pearlies accessorising a firm(-ish) hug as I leave.

A famous person lifting the corners of their mouth in aid of good publicity? You might say this is not unprecedented. And yet charming, charismatic and forthright though she is, Roberts – one fifth of all-conquering girl group Girls Aloud – has a reputation to contend with. In 2002, when she, Nadine, Cheryl, Kimberley and Sarah won talent show Popstars: The Rivals and hit the tabloids running, she swiftly found herself dubbed the “moody one” of the band. Nine years on, and it’s a label she’s still tagged with, judging by my random sampling of some not especially pop-cultural- savvy friends. “I wasn’t moody,” she reflects now. “I was 17 years old and from a place which is very small and where people don’t walk around smiling all day, they have problems… And I smile when something makes me smile. If I’m walking out of a club, and there are paparazzi there, what the fuck have I got to smile about?”

Now 25, Roberts seems poised to shatter some more preconceptions with her pretty darned fantastic solo album. For though she may come from a manufactured pop band, Cinderella’s Eyes is anything but production line. The seeds of anticipation were sown with the lead-off single “Beat of My Drum”. Neither overblown balladry (hurrah!) nor cod-raunchy R&B (double hurrah!), here was a spiky, savvy electro-pop anthem, complete with cheerleader-style chanting, that bore the influence of French house honchos Justice and art-pop-rapper MIA. It was also, for my mind, the song of the summer. “[There's a] sense of seaside-surreality, a ‘British’ pop sense that has been missing from the airwaves for far too long… a brilliant pop moment from an unlikely source,” declared unlikely source NME. “Cheesy but super-cool” is the rather less guileful description we agree on, which I think just about nails it. Indeed, such cheesy super-coolness permeates Cinderella’s Eyes, with sassy Girls Aloud-esque hooks sitting alongside rap segues and off-kilter electronics.