'Dancing With The Stars' cast member Derek Hough has opened up about his past relationship with songstress Cheryl Cole in a new interview.

The pair met when Hough took a job dancing with her in the music video for 'Parachute' and revealed that at the time, he had never heard any of her material although he knew she was 'very' popular in the UK:

"I honestly took the gig because it was an excuse to come back to the U.K. as I hadn't been back in so long... I vaguely knew who Cheryl Cole was - in that I knew she was very popular in the U.K. But I had never met her; the best I knew of her was from Google searches... I hadn't heard her music at that time."

Hough and Cole kept their romance out of the public eye, although he did stand by her when she was suffering with malaria, but he explained that while he won't share many details of their partnership he will always speak highly of her:

"We dated for a while. Absolutely we are still friends, we are still very close... I don't speak about my time with her because I think often in this culture people take advantage of their friendships. I've never spoken about her because her friendship is important to me."