In the post-Spice Girls pure pop boom, the all-singing, all-dancing S Club 7 came to epitomise a certain turn of the millennium optimism. Their songs were peppy, sugary and loaded with gleeful generalities about reaching for the stars and forgetting about your cares. For the majority of their lineup, and for most of the pop stars at the time, landing a place in a pop act was the fulfilment of a childhood dream, or the perfect chance to escape a mundane job. S Club member Bradley McIntosh, for example, was working in a Pizza Hut when he got the call. For Paul Cattermole, the band’s most enigmatic member, who died on 6 April aged 46, there was no clamouring for an audition. He was scouted at his musical theatre school – at a time when his first rock band were playing small shows – and thrust into the world of pop.
Even in the group’s official book, 7 Heaven, released in 2001 after the band had scored seven Top 3 singles in a row and starred in three hugely successful CBBC TV shows, Cattermole’s description of being picked for the band is matter-of-fact: “I was asked to audition for the band and I got in – it’s as simple as that!”
