S Club Secrets Revealed

Take That, Spice Girls, Boyzone, Five, Steps and, if rumour has it right, then imminently Westlife. It’s in the sciences, genetically proven that pop groups have a lifespan.

Three albums, the departure of a key member, a stunted attempt to carry on and it’s all over by the Greatest Hits. When Paul Cattermole – the star S Club attraction to the ladies and certain gentlemen – announced he was leaving to pursue a nu-metal direction at the start of the year – it looked like the familiar cycle was starting again (after we’d stopped laughing that is).

“We were quite kind of shocked that he was actually gonna leave,” says Tina Barrett, the raven-haired late-flowering talent of the sixsome. “But in the big picture it wasn’t too much of a shock because Paul wasn’t really into the music. He was into, y’know, rock music. It’s a cool way to start off but I think after four years he was ready to do his own thing.”

So there was never any danger of S Club taking on Paul’s nu-metal direction?

“He would have had a long wait! He would have had to hang on for that. I don’t think the world’s ready for S Club metal!”

New single Alive sees them mix the seventies disco formula of Don’t Stop Moving with the trimmings of French house. Obviously great, it’s the first single from a new album and soundtrack album from forthcoming S Club movie Seeing Double, hot on the heels of the S Club United tour. Winding down is hardly an option.

“I think we definitely reassessed how it was gonna go from there,” says Tina, “but we were never gonna split, no.”

Seeing Double sees S Club come face to face with their `clones’. Shot in LA and Barcelona, it sounds like good surreal fun, and significantly better than Spiceworld. So is this a standoff with your evil alter-egos?

“No they’re not evil,” Tina reassures us. “They’re just very innocent, they’ve only been alive for a couple of weeks so they’re just empty vessels if you like. Similar to the real band really! It’s a lot of fun, we’ve got some great characters in there, plus Gareth Gates has a cameo.

What does he do?

“He plays a clone of Gareth Gates. We’ve got loads of other people as well. Michael Jackson, Elton John. They were very good – these are all lookalikes obviously. We’ve got millions of people who look like icons. It’s great. Madonna in our film! Why hire the real thing when you can get the look-alikes for two euros! Well a bit more than that actually{hellip}”

Whatever, with this much activity, it’s just possible that S Club might turn out to be the most enduring pop group ever.

“What’s our secret? Well, I don’t know. We’re just kind of doing it until we wanna do something else. I don’t think there’s a particular secret. We’re just enjoying it. I think most bands break up because they don’t want to be together anymore. I don’t think there’s any big philosophy behind it.”

As a group of pretenders unfit to prepare the S Club Juniors’ lunchboxes once said, it’s pure and simple.

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Credit: Manchester Online

Posted: November 5th, 2002