Paul Cattermole, who has died aged 46, was part of the chart-topping pop band S Club 7 from its formation in 1998 until he quit in 2002, making his last appearance with them at the Queen’s Golden Jubilee concert that June. His departure from the septet prompted them to be renamed S Club.
The group had become one of the most successful acts of their era, notching up 11 Top 5 singles in the UK and scoring a US Top 10 hit with the lachrymose ballad Never Had a Dream Come True. Their debut single, Bring It All Back, strongly reminiscent of the Jackson 5, was the first of their four UK chart-toppers. Their debut album, S Club, reached No 2, the follow-up 7 (2000) reached No 1, and the third, Sunshine (2001), went to No 3. The first three albums all achieved multi-platinum sales, though sales fell away for Seeing Double, which did not feature Cattermole. The group won best British breakthrough act at the Brit awards in 2000, and the best British single trophy in 2002 for Don’t Stop Movin’.
S Club 7 was the brainchild of Simon Fuller, the erstwhile svengali behind the Spice Girls; he claimed that the concept came to him the day after the Spice Girls sacked him in November 1997. The following year Fuller’s new project attracted more than 10,000 applicants, and Cattermole was one of those invited to audition.
The group members were initially chosen to star in a TV series, Miami 7 (written by Fuller’s brother Kim), which aired on CBBC from April to July 1999. They played fictional versions of themselves, in a pop group offered a chance by their management to hit the big time in Miami. They would sing one of the songs from their debut album at the end of each episode.
Renamed S Club 7 in Miami, the TV show was subsequently broadcast on the Fox Family channel in the US. “It was great travelling to the States but all of the indoor shots were actually filmed back in England,” Cattermole said. In 2000, S Club 7 starred in a follow-up TV series, LA7, and S Club 7 Go Wild! found them travelling the world to raise awareness of endangered animal species.
Cattermole was born in St Albans, Hertfordshire, the son of Liz and Gerald. He described how “my great-grandfather was the managing director of Abbey Road studios, my grandfather was a nanoelectronic particle physicist. I’m one of those strange people who actually liked physics at school.”
He attended the National Youth Music Theatre, and among his contemporaries were Sheridan Smith, who became a close friend, and his future S Club 7 bandmate (and romantic partner) Hannah Spearritt. He appeared with Spearritt in the NYMT’s production of Pendragon, a stage musical about King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. This toured in New York, the far east and Edinburgh. He subsequently trained at Mountview Theatre School in south London.
His departure from S Club 7 in 2002 reflected a tension between the band and their management, with the group wanting to explore more cutting-edge sounds rather then being made to stick to lightweight pop. Before joining S Club 7, Cattermole had been in a heavy metal band called Skua, which perhaps better reflected his personal tastes than S Club’s breezy bubblegum stylings. He rejoined Skua after quitting S Club, but the huge pop profile he had gained while being part of Fuller’s massive multimedia operation made it difficult for him to be taken seriously as a rocker.
S Club split up in 2003. In 2008, Cattermole joined his former bandmates Jo O’Meara and Bradley McIntosh to play gigs as S Club 3, but subsequently found himself being edged out by another S Clubber, Tina Barrett.
In 2014 the band reunited to perform a medley of their hits for a BBC Children in Need telethon, and in May the following year played a string of arena dates dubbed the Bring It All Back 2015 tour. Later that year, Cattermole toured in a production of Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show, taking the role of Eddie, but had to drop out after suffering a back injury.
His financial situation became precarious, not least because it transpired that it was Fuller rather than the S Club 7 members who had been signed to the Polydor record label. The band were “affiliates”, not the multimillionaires the public often imagined a group who had sold 10m records worldwide to be. “It’s not a fair way of doing things,” Cattermole commented. “If you’re making 20-year-old kids work every single day of the week, you’ve gotta make sure they’re paid well.”
He found himself facing a large tax bill. As he explained on the Loose Women TV show, “all the money from that tour went to pay that bill off, and I had to do the next job that came in because it’s showbiz”. In 2018 he was forced to raise cash by auctioning his Brit awards (“grab yourself a bargain!” he urged bidders on eBay).
He described how he had tried to boost his earnings by going on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! or Dancing on Ice. “I have asked them many times if they will let me in and they won’t have me. I’m not famous enough, apparently.”
He even tried his hand as an online tarot card reader, clairvoyant and spirit coach, charging £39.95 per 20-minute session. Yet despite his problems, Cattermole always seemed good-natured and philosophical.
In February this year the S Club 7 members announced they would be reuniting for a 25th anniversary tour in October, culminating in a show at the O2 Arena in London. A huge rush for tickets prompted them to add several extra dates.
• Paul Gerald Cattermole, pop singer, born 7 March 1977; died 6 April 2023
