Simon Cowell has revealed he came close to punching one of the biggest boy band stars of the 90s.
On Saturday, Louis Theroux produced the documentary Boybands Forever launches on BBC Two, with some of the biggest popstars of the 90s and 00s explaining how living out their wildest dreams turned into a total nightmare.
Among them is Scott Robinson of chart-topping boyband Five – also made up of Ritchie Neville, Jason ‘J’ Brown, Sean Conlon, and Abz Love – who recalls breaking down to record label executives, including Simon, trying to quit the band for good only to be told he wasn’t allowed.
Five eventually split up in 2001 after three number-one singles including Keep On Movin’, Everybody Get Up and Let’s Dance.
Scott admits to bursting into his record label’s bosses and getting into a physical fight with management.
He said: ‘I pinned one of the big cheeses at the record label up against his desk with my foot crushing him into the wall and said “I will f**king leave this band, you try and f**king stop me’ with Simon Cowell trying to fight me off him.’
He added: ‘I’d lost my mind, they had to call security and carry me out the building kicking and screaming like a wild dog through the revolving doors and out.’
X Factor judge Simon remembers the incident too.
‘We almost ended up in a fist fight, I was that close to punching him in the face,’ he said
Despite his desperate calls, Scott couldn’t leave Five just yet.
He continued: ‘Maybe a week later I‘m called into another meeting and everyone’s there and they’re going you can’t leave.
‘This time I’ve got in front of me four other people’s lives and I couldn’t let them down so I said go on then, I’ll do it, I should have said no.’
Scott’s bandmate Ritche also appears in Boybands Forever, revealing the truth behind his very public breakup with then-pop princess Billie Piper.
Ritchie and Billie dated in 1999 but split when a tabloid splashed he’d spent the night with another woman while the band was in Russia.
It turned out there was more to the story.
‘We were each other’s safe place,’ he said. ‘It was very much young love in a very strange environment in a very strange life.’
He continued: ‘I was in Russia having some food and in come these really attractive Russians. That was slightly odd. Why were they there?’
It’s revealed the women were paid and planted by a tabloid hoping to lure Ritchie into cheating on Billie for a story.
‘I do remember the headline: “Five star Ritchie undid my skirt with his teeth.” Almost like a porn story,’ Ritchie said.
‘It massively hurt somebody that I loved. I regret any pain I caused but equally, I was 19 and I made a mistake. It ended a relationship.
‘I think that was one of the bigger things to cope with was the tabloids because they want you to slip up, they want to ruin you. That developed into a deep never-ending paranoia – you are always wary.’
Members of Take That, East 17, Westlife, Blue, 911 and Damage also appear in Forever Boybands, each with their own hellish tails from life at the top of the charts.
Boybands Forever airs November 16th at 9pm on BBC Two.
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