Former S Club 7 member Hannah Spearritt has written a book about her time in the band. Photo / Getty Images
It seemed like a dream job for 17-year-old Hannah Spearritt — a chart-topping pop star beloved by millions. The reality was very different: “I felt numb.”
From the outside S Club 7 looked like a sugar rush of bubblegum-pop fun. One of the biggest bands of the late 1990s, they peddled millennium optimism, big smiles and high-kicks, selling more than 14 million albums and getting four UK No 1s. They were put up in fancy hotels, chauffeured around and showered with gifts by their manager, Simon Fuller, the mastermind music mogul who had previously managed the Spice Girls.
The reality, though, was “exhausting”, says Hannah Spearritt, who was 17 when she joined. She says they got time off at Christmas but otherwise no weekends, holidays or sick leave, working up to 18 hours a day. They were marketed through television shows and a movie, so had a “contractual obligation” to be their character whenever they were in public. “Hannah” was ditzy, upbeat and innocent.
And they were paid properly only at the end of their five-year contract. “We were just always working,” Spearritt says. “You’re just in this bubble, this rollercoaster where everything’s happening to you.”
S Club 7 are reuniting this year — selling out a 15-date UK arena tour — but depleted by tragedy. In April one member, Paul Cattermole, died of natural causes. Shortly afterwards it was announced that Spearritt, 42, would not join the tour, much to her surprise. Instead she has written a book — Facing the Music — about her life inside the band when they were under “control” and then outside when they were “free”. It is a window into an era of highly manufactured pop when bands were packaged up and served like living dolls to millions of teeny-bopper fans.
“By 21 years old I was exhausted,” Spearritt says today, sitting on a sofa at a photo studio in east London. “[When S Club disbanded] I just wanted to shut the door. I wanted space and calmness and not to be on show and be happy all the time. Because you had to be happy all the time . . . But it’s not real.”
Spearritt grew up in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, moving to London at 16 with the National Youth Theatre. She turned up to auditions for S Club 7 in 1998 with her best friend, Sheridan Smith, the actress, after they saw an advert in The Stage.
S Club 7 were three boys and four girls, “best friends” who were going to be your best friends too. Their creator, Fuller, was known as the other Simon to Cowell, both men in the market of young pop success. Fuller would later persuade Abba to reunite in virtual reality. He also created Pop Idol.
Before S Club 7 signed their contract, Spearritt says, the band were taken to Italy by Fuller to stay at his villa — modern but barely furnished, “like a single man’s pad”. She says he took the band shopping in Capri and said they could buy anything they wanted. Back at the villa he gave them more gifts — a Tiffany necklace for Spearritt — and a gold card reading “S Club 7″. The “S” reportedly stood for Simon.
“We were just being treated to what life could be like,” Spearritt says. To me, I say, it reads a little bit manipulatively. Spearritt looks at me, eyes wide, silent. “I think that’s safe to say that’s what’s been implied,” her publicist eventually says.
The band were then launched through Miami 7, a fictional kids’ TV series on CBBC about a pop band, in which they each played their character — a “2D version of our real identity,” Spearritt says. They were an instant hit.
“There was this separation that started to happen when fame kicked in,” she says. “Because all of a sudden you’re the version of ‘you’ that is being sold.” How did it feel when she was approached by fans? “Numbness.” Like they were talking about someone else? “Yeah. It was almost like those characters had taken over our identity. And that completely stunted my personal growth.”
I was at primary school when S Club 7 were in their pomp — I adored them. I had all their albums, learnt every dance routine and owned a pink glittery cowboy hat with their logo on the front. When I saw them in concert (at seven years old) I was too stunned to stand up from my seat. My dad said it was the only concert he’d been to where he didn’t see a single musical instrument.
The hits were unashamedly upbeat, about reaching for the stars, climbing every mountain or there being no party like an S Club party. They performed at the Queen’s Golden Jubilee and won two Brit awards.
Backstage, though, Spearritt felt “like a pretty bird living in a gilded cage”, she writes in her book. “The hotels were extremely luxurious and we got cars everywhere,” she says today. “But it was part of the look.” If they were paid only pocket money before the end of the five-year contract, how did they have cash to pay for meals, for example? “That would all be taken care of.”
One Boxing Day her mum rang the management to say that Spearritt was so ill that a doctor had instructed a week of bed rest. “Management made it clear in no uncertain terms that I had to be back or else,” Spearritt writes. “My life was essentially signed over to 19 Entertainment [Fuller’s company].”
In 2003 it was estimated that the band made their label £64 million ($132 million), made up of music sales, sponsorship deals and TV rights. Spearritt says she was paid the equivalent of £120,000 ($248,000) per annum at the end of her contract that same year. She alleges that Paul Cattermole received just £20,000 ($41,000) per annum because he departed early. He later sold his Brit award on eBay for cash. XIX Entertainment, which manages S Club 7, disputes both figures.
Does Spearritt still sing today? “No,” she says. “If I did I’d feel sorry for the people who had to listen!” Instead she pursued an acting career, with the lead role in ITV’s Primeval and roles in the BBC’s Death in Paradise, EastEnders and Casualty. She lives a quiet life in Richmond, southwest London, with her daughters — aged two and four — and her partner, Adam, a personal trainer.
There have been various configurations of S Club over the years, playing as groups of three or four in nightclubs. In February 2023 they announced an anniversary tour. Two months later, at 46 years old, Cattermole died.
“He was my best friend in the band,” Spearritt says. She cannot talk about him without crying — they dated for five years, breaking up in 2006. “Paul’s death, that was just a whole other level of trauma.”
The month after he died the band released a video. “You’ve probably noticed that there’s only five of us here today, and although Hannah will always be part of S Club 7 she won’t be joining us on this tour.”
It came as a shock to Spearritt, who says she had not been consulted on her exclusion and had no idea she had been dropped. She says she had gone silent in her communications with the band “because I needed to be with my family and take the time to process [Paul’s] loss”, but had never said she didn’t want to be involved. On the opening night of their tour last week, the band dedicated the show to Cattermole, saying, “Gone but you will never be forgotten.”
Are they still friends? “Life is busy for everybody,” she says. The band is notably absent from the acknowledgments in her book. Does she listen to their music today? “Not voluntarily.” Do her kids put it on? “Yes!” she shrieks. “They are addicted to it.” She says through mocked gritted teeth: “It’s lovely! When you put shuffle on your phone, and” — she sings the opening beats of Reach — “I’m like, ‘Eugh, turn it off!’” She imitates scrambling for her phone to shut it up. “That’s my kneejerk reaction.”
Facing the Music by Hannah Spearritt is on sale now.
Written by: Megan Agnew
© The Times of London
William Dart reviews Auckland Philharmonia's showcase of Tchaikovsky’s wizardry,