Watch out Gareth, here’s Kimberley!” With that headline, ten years ago to just about the day, the Telegraph & Argus ran its first story on a fresh-faced 20-year-old from Sandy Lane, Bradford, who had made the final 20 in a TV show format that then seemed new and fresh.

“Gareth”, of course, was Gareth Gates, the Bradford-born singer who won the hearts of a nation when he made it to the final – and lost out in the voting against Will Young – of Pop Idol, one of the first of the revitalised TV talent shows that now seem a permanent fixture of our pop-culture landscape.

The massive success of Pop Idol was repeated and tweaked by ITV in 2002 with Pop Stars: The Rivals, in which the show did not want to merely create a new pop star, but a whole group.

The “rivals” aspect was that there were to be two groups created – one of boys and one of girls. The boys – One True Voice – were quickly consigned to a footnote of pop history, while there can be few people in the country who haven’t heard of Girls Aloud and their constituent members – Cheryl Cole, Nadine Coyle, Nicola Roberts, Sarah Harding and, of course, Kimberley Walsh.

Even though Girls Aloud went on hiatus in 2009 for the individual members to pursue solo projects, their currency remains buoyant. Few of them are out of the gossip pages and Cheryl Cole and Kimberley especially have forged high profiles – Cheryl thanks to her solo singing, her stint as a judge on X Factor, and turbulent marriage to footballer Ashley Cole; and Kimberley through her stage appearances, TV presenting and now as a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing.

And now the three-year break is over. Girls Aloud yesterday announced that they are back together, and on Friday, October 19, will perform live on Strictly Come Dancing, just ahead of what will be their tenth anniversary as a band.

It’s been a long decade since Popstars: The Rivals judge Louis Walsh turned up at Kimberley’s home to tell her, in front of the cameras, that she had made the final of the show. As we reported: “Viewers saw Louis call at Kimberley’s home where he told her she had been picked out, prompting joyous family celebrations, including one relative who appeared on TV dressed only in a towel.”

That was brother Adam – Kimberley is one of four children, with two sisters Sally and Amy – and mum Diane remembers the day well. She says: “We’d been told that they wanted to come and interview Kimberley from ITV to talk about what she might be doing after the show. We had no idea it was to tell her that she was through to the finals, until Louis Walsh walked in.”

Life was going to change forever. Kimberley was two years into studying media and English at Trinity & All Saints College in Horsforth, after schooling at Beckfoot Grammar in Bingley and Sandy Lane Primary before that. If she had dreams of working in the media, though, she was soon to find herself on the other side of the cameras.

She was not a complete stranger to showbusiness, however, as a graduate of both the Stage 84 theatre school in Bradford and the DM Academy dance school.

When Girls Aloud’s first single was released in December – the Sound Of The Underground – it immediately eclipsed the rival One True Voice’s effort and propelled the girls to the top of the charts, earning Kimberley and co their first record breaker as the first girl-band to get the coveted Christmas number one spot. There began a pop career that saw the band quickly outgrow their “manufactured pop group” tag to rack up an impressive discography and trophy cabinet.

Their debut album, also called Sound Of The Underground, went platinum, they released 20 singles, all but one charting in the top ten. Three singles went straight in at number one, they had five Brit Award nominations.

With their newfound fame – and, yes, fortune: in 2009 the Times Rich List said the group had amassed £25 million between them – came the inevitable tabloid interest. Nightclub paparazzi shots, gossip and – rather incredibly – the claim from one red-top that the girls had been told to lose weight by their management. The band were furious at the message this might send out to young girls who were fans of the group, and Kimberley said: “It is what is inside that counts. We would say eat healthily and be happy.”

Kimberley, however, managed to avoid some of the more sensational headlines that bandmates Cheryl Cole and Sarah Harding attracted. Mum Diane says the family has never had too much trouble with the press. “It’s always been fairly quiet on that score,” she says. We’ve not really had autograph hunters turning up looking for her.”

In 2009, the band announced they were taking a year-long break. Although this became three years, it was an opportunity for Kimberley to stretch her wings outside the Girls Aloud confines and explore new avenues – which, arguably, turned her into an even bigger star.

The year the band was put on hold, Kimberley climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with a team of other celebrities for Comic Relief. The following year she went back to her media-training roots and provided red-carpet reportage on that year’s Bafta awards for MTV. Sky 1 screened a fly-on-the-wall documentary about her, Kimberley Walsh: Blue Jean Girl, and then she was snapped up by digital channel Viva to front youth music programme Suck My Pop.

But she didn’t turn her back on performing, singing backing vocals on rapper Aggro Santos’s 2011 hit Like U Like and teaming up this year with Alfie Boe for a cover of Queen’s One Vision to serve as the official Team GB Olympic song.

In 2011, the big screen beckoned, with Kimberley getting a role in the live-action movie version of the TV cartoon Horrid Henry, and also the stage, with perhaps Kimberley’s most significant role outside of Girls Aloud – that of Princess Fiona in the West End stage show of Shrek.

It’s true northern grit and a solid work ethic. Diana Walsh says: “Kimberley has always worked really hard and she loves being so busy. It’s hard to believe it’s ten years since it all started, but she’s done so much in that time, and all our friends, family and people from Bradford have always been so incredibly supportive of her.”

Kimberley is in the limelight again, wowing the judges on Strictly Come Dancing on BBC1 at weekends. Diane was there to see Kimberley’s first dance last Saturday. “She doesn’t get up here so much these days, but I go down to see her as much as I can. It was wonderful to be in the crowd and see her dance on Strictly.”

Deana Morgan of the DM Academy is keenly watching Kimberley’s efforts in Strictly Come Dancing. She says: “She’d had phenomenal success with Girls Aloud and now we’re watching her putting the dance steps she learned at DM Academy to good use. I wouldn’t be surprised if she went all the way to the final.”

And now, just as Kimberley’s star is ascendant again, here comes the reunion of Girls Aloud. “Wouldn’t it be lovely if they were at the top of the charts again, ten years after they started out,” says Diane proudly.

Unlike many other celebrities, Kimberley keeps her love life relatively private. She’s been with former boyband singer Justin Scott for nine of her ten years in the spotlight. So are wedding bells imminent? Surely mum knows.

“She hasn’t told me if they are,” she laughs. “I think she’s a little bit busy at the moment!”

With a ten-year showbusiness career under her belt, Kimberley Walsh is busier than ever and has proved she not only has that elusive ‘x-factor’, but something else just as important in the industry: staying power.

In other words, watch out everybody, here’s Kimberley.