The days of scorn being poured on manufactured bands who can’t actually write a middle eight or execute a “G seventh with augmented fifth” on a guitar are now long gone. The most successful bands of the last decade – Take That, Boyzone, the Spice Girls – were all formed from ads in theatre magazines or hand-picked by a music svengali with a vision for “an all dancing, all singing quintet”.

In fact the mastermind behind the Spice Girls – Simon Fuller – is also the driving force behind the latest pop sensations to hit the charts, S Club 7. He deployed an army of talent scouts to search for suitable good-looking talent from every theatre school, club and holiday camp in the country, which is how Rachel Stevens, Tina Barrett, Hannah Spearritt, Jo O’Meara and the three boys Bradley McIntosh, Jon Lee and Paul Cattermole became stars.

What was the worst job you had before joining S Club 7?

Tina: I once had to wear a bikini and stand in a swimming pool for a Wrigley’s chewing gum advert. It was freezing cold and we could only wear these flimsy robes between takes. Then I was the roof of a house in an ad for Halifax. It was the one where the people are standing on each other’s shoulders to create this “human house”. I had to wear a long silver dress and lie down, harnessed to the ceiling, and pretend to be roof tiles.

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