Two days after returning from Montreal, I was training again, and I went on to win two more golds at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

After retiring from competition in 1981, I did exhibitions and coached.

I think a lot of people don't actually know me. They think, 'She's like this,' or, 'She's like that.' They say I have no emotions - I do, but you couldn't see them then. I had to keep them inside.

Gymnastics is so huge in the Olympics. There are a lot of fans who want to see more.

I wasn't allowed to leave Romania. That made me mad. You just want your freedom. You want your space. You want opportunity.

When I got married in Bucharest, there were 10,000 people on the street. People didn't go to work that day. It was emotional to see how people care about you. I didn't expect that.

See, when I went to the Olympics in '76, the gymnastics people knew that I was good, but everybody else, after I won, everybody was like, 'Where's she coming from? Who is she? What is Romania?'

In the '80 Olympics... people expected me to win. I was good enough to win, and I made a mistake and ended up second, which is pretty good, too.

When you're growing up, you realize you've got a lot of heavy things on your shoulders.

Now, I have a kid, I have businesses to take care of, I have to travel. I have to sit down... and find a little time for me.

I work out every day, but my idea is to make something short. I work out a maximum half hour. I only do like 20 minutes of cardio, and I do some stretching and some light weights, and I'm out of there.

I'm not a dreamer for, you know, 'I want to go to the moon someday.' I accomplished something when I was young, which was much more than I expected to. My results were much bigger than I ever dreamed about it.

I've only been blessed with one talent, unfortunately, and that's being able to sing a wee bit.

Lip balm can double up for taming the brows, too.

I am such an indoor person.

I'm not a particularly healthy eater. But I am 100 per cent fit and healthy and I am the right weight for my body type.

I'm very close to a lot of people from my time in the band, like our hair and make-up people and the dancers, but you gravitate towards the people that you have stuff in common with.

I have a very good, close circle of friends, I keep it positive. Obviously there is the negative stuff, but you've got to let go of it. You can't get bogged down in the details of anything, otherwise you'd drive yourself mad.

I am psychic.

As a woman I think we are capable of doing so many things. There is great ability to compartmentalise - to focus on the task at hand, do it well and then move on to the next one, while having another million things going on.

My weight often fluctuates by half a stone.

Some days I am fine but us mums are not robots, we are not perfect, we have to give ourselves a break and a pat on the back.

I was born and raised in Derry and I can't change the way I talk.

My big weakness is potatoes. I love them mashed or baked.

I tend to go with the flow and that flow can end up in great places or not so great places.

I love the live shows when they're on and all singing great but I hate it when the judges say bad things about their singing. I feel sick because I feel it is mean because I've done the reality TV thing so I have such strong memories of what it feels like and I just imagine how bad and how nervous they must feel.

Louis Walsh, he made me audition for Girls Aloud, he said, 'If you don't, I won't speak to you again.' I was like, 'We don't speak that much anyway.' I went and it all worked out well, I wouldn't have gone to the audition if it wasn't for him.

The entertainment thing - you're there to entertain, it's not about you - I get that, but for a while I lost my opinion.

I was losing sight of myself and started to get anxiety and stress. You work at such a pace and you don't have time to sit with yourself and think.

Keeping your sense of self is important.

It was fine at the start but there's always politics in any band. It just happened that I always got more vocals than everybody else, so in terms of people wanting their voice heard, that wasn't happening. It made people, very bitter.

I am one of three sisters and went to an all-girls grammar school so I'm used to being around girls.

I like being in a girl band.

I had a few teachers when they would hear a noise they would immediately be like, 'Nadine, outside!' I spent about two years standing outside the physics classroom.

There was no social media. There's not as many TV shows and magazines and things. Before you would release a single and you would go to HMV and do a signing and a performance, they don't even have HMV anymore.

I love the Girls Aloud songs and get messages from fans asking to hear them performed live again.

Money is far more important to me than love because ultimately it lasts longer.

My dad was a singer. Old classic stuff like 'Brown Eyed Girl,' or 'Delilah' if he was getting really dramatic. And there was always a gig. All the men would go out and play, congregate back at our house, and I would be up with them wailing into the wee hours.

I just think of me in a supermarket planning what I'm going to cook for the evening, and buying maybe a bottle of wine, getting excited about putting on my new CD. That to me is, it's a lovely, nostalgic feeling. Everybody needs to eat and live and shop, after all.

When I was 13 I'd record myself on my karaoke machine and if I didn't like it I'd record it again. I'd do that for hours, making sure each line sounded just right.

I think it's down to our songs - we've always made sure every song on every album works.

All the stories are the least of my worries - I'm so used to it. There's never been anybody trying to get away from the band, because this is what we all wanna do.

We're not into all those dodgy journos who makes stories up.

I'm a size six to eight.

Because of all the touring we do, our diets are all over the place.

I hate sweating, running and getting that red-faced look.

It's amazing what you can do in your bathroom! I would do vocals and stuff on my computer that would need to be sent to London or New York for things to be added on, and I was thinking they always say you sound good in the bathroom - but then I'd kick the bin, or someone in the next room would flush the chain or something and I'd be like 'oh no!'

Slowly but surely, people don't see 'Popstars: The Rivals,' they see Girls Aloud. We're a band in our own right.

I don't want to be in the newspapers or to feel like I have to manipulate things to make my life seem a way it's not.

My focus has always been on being a singer. It's easy enough to keep it private.