The cats who got the cream

By CHARLOTTE CRIPPS

Atomic Kitten may look like hair-and-beauty-salon workers, but the three girls from Liverpool — Liz McClarnon, Jenny Frost and Natasha Hamilton — are Britain's biggest girl band, having sold 5.2 million singles and three million albums since they formed, in 1999.

Ladies Night, their new, third album, features the Kittens' version of Kool and The Gang's disco classic of the same name, which is likely to contest the British Christmas No 1 single slot with the straggly-haired rockers the Darkness — a case of beauty versus the beast.

For now, the romantic, soulful pop of the new single, If You Come to Me, entered the British chart at No 3.

Today, just two Kittens, McClarnon and Frost, turn up for the interview. Hamilton, who has been looking disconcertingly thin and signed off work two weeks ago with flu, is not present. According to Atomic Kitten's people, she has just been diagnosed with postnatal depression, 15 months after the birth of her son, Josh.

Atomic Kitten's lives are well publicised, as their weighty press-cuttings book testifies. It reveals that Hamilton has gone public about her recent boob job. "Never say never," Frost says. Frost has arrived for the interview wearing a Zara deerstalker and YSL-belted, low-waisted Diesel jeans, with black lacy knickers showing at the back.

The ringtone on Frost's phone, it soon transpires, is Beyonce's Crazy in Love. "That's how I tell it's my boyfriend calling," she confides. "But if either of the other girls phones, the ringtone is Sweet Dreams by Annie Lennox."

There is something refreshingly honest about the band. Musically, Atomic Kitten may often amount to little more than an embellished karaoke act, but you get the feeling that they never intended to be anything else.

While similar manufactured pop bands change their musical style as often as the weather, Atomic Kitten remain themselves. And while the Sugababes, arch-rivals with whom Atomic Kitten are often in dispute, try hard to be cool, the Kittens — who were recently photographed for Heat magazine in a cat basket — content themselves with making good old-fashioned, no-frills pop music. Perhaps blandness is less of a risk than trying to market themselves with any edge.

"We work bloody hard, though," says McClarnon, who is wearing a black polo-neck and black Joseph trousers with a pair of office-worker glasses. She has a headache: "My mum bought me an electric blanket," she says, "and last night it dehydrated my brain."


It has not always been an easy ride since they were brought together by Andy McCluskey, formerly of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.

In 2001, one of the founder members, Kerry Katona, announced she was leaving to have a baby with Brian McFaden of Westlife. About the same time, the band's record company, Innocent, lost faith in them.

But Frost, formerly of the girl band Precious, was recruited, and, in a last-ditch effort, the band released Whole Again. It went straight to No 1, selling a million copies. Atomic Kitten haven't looked back since.

When asked the secret of their longe-vity, Frost says: "People can relate to us," she says. "They look at us and say, if they can do it, anybody can do it."

- INDEPENDENT


* Atomic Kitten are playing a free, invitation-only gig at Auckland Town Hall on Saturday.