The boyband star reveals when the cracks began to show (Picture: Martyn Goodacre/Getty Images)
Boybands Forever is the new documentary from Louis Theroux starring members of the biggest boybands of the 90s and 00s who realised their dream of pop stardom was actually a nightmare.
Ritchie Neville is among the heartthrobs to feature as member of Five, the chart-topping group also made up of Abz Love, Scott Robinson, Sean Conlon and Jason Paul Brown or ‘J’ as he was best known to fans.
After releasing their debut single Slam Dunk Da Funk in 1998, the band went on to score three number one singles, a number one album and were the only UK boyband who came close to breaking America, an unreachable feat for British pop acts in the 90s.
They were also one of the first acts signed by Simon Cowell to RCA, before he brought his signature brand of cruelty to primetime Saturday night television on Pop Idol and later The X Factor.
But just three years after the release of their debut single with the world at their feet, Five split. Life at the top of the charts became too much. They were exhausted, broken, and as several of their pop peers agree in Boybands Forever, exploited beyond what was even safe for a human being.
In Boybands Forever, Cowell concedes that Five were the band that ‘got away’.
‘I understand what he means by that,’ Ritchie tells Metro. ‘He would always say to us, “F**k me you guys are an absolute f**king nightmare off stage. I’ve never seen a shambles like it but when you five go on stage, you’re f**king incredible. I actually think you’re incredible.”
Five ‘could have done a lot more’, Ritchie revealed (Picture: Tim Roney/Getty Images)
‘I feel that there was an untapped potential, even though we did well we could have done a lot more.’
The cracks in Five perhaps became most visible when the boys were told they couldn’t see their families at Christmas anymore because an opportunity had come up in America.
Ritchie’s bandmate Scott burst into the record label’s office, by his own admission ‘pinned one of the big cheeses against his desk with my foot crushing him’ and demanded to quit the band.
But that wasn’t going to happen. At least not yet. He was told there was no way Five would become Four even though the row become so heated Cowell says he came close to ‘punching Scott in the face’.
The former X Factor head judge was on the verge of punching the boyband member in the face (Picture: Ron Davis/Getty Images)
Scott wasn’t the only member struggling. Sean, the youngest bandmate, had been struck off and was placed on gardening leave, with the others banned from even contacting him.
The group were preparing for a performance on Top of The Pops when it became clear that Five couldn’t possibly go on.
‘Scott came in and he was crying uncontrollably. You know, when some can’t breathe – that kind of crying. Jay and I were just sat in a hotel corridor, Scott sat on the floor, us either side of him with our arms around him with Sean in the back of our minds.
‘We just looked over his shoulder as he was saying, “I can’t do it anymore.”
‘We just looked at each other and we went, “it’s done, isn’t it?”’
Ritchie explained how the group simply needed time to ‘chill’ at home (Picture: Lorne Thomson/Redferns)
But it didn’t need to be the end. Boybands Forever makes an example of the men pulling the strings with total disregard for an artist’s welfare. In the documentary, Scott stresses that all he really needed was time with a doctor and a break and Five could have continued for years.
‘I agree with that,’ says Ritchie. ‘If our time has been managed differently, not just then, but throughout the four and our five years, I think that we might not have even got to that point.
‘We just needed time to be with our folks, even just chill out, go to the pub and relax, be a young lad, not working like a dog. We didn’t have time really to do that.’
Outside of pressures from the label, Five were catching the eye of tabloids. No more so than when Ritchie began dating Billie Piper, who was at the time one of the biggest popstars in the UK too.
‘It was very much young love in a very strange environment in a very strange life,’ says Ritchie.
Billie Piper seen performing on stage in Manchester in 1998 (Picture: Pete Still/Redferns)
But it wasn’t to last. When Five were in Russia, Ritchie was approached by a group of women and felt as though something was off. The documentary reveals the women were planted by a tabloid to lure Ritchie into cheating on Billie – and they were successful.
It ended the relationship, and Ritchie hurt someone he loved. But it also validated any paranoia that comes with being in the public eye – how can you trust anyone?
‘Your relationships with your friends from school and your family starts to get odd,’ says Ritchie.
‘I just accepted that that was my reality, and that’s what I had to look at out for.
‘It’s only when you come away and you talk about it people go, “Wow, that’s crazy.” That’s just how it is and how it was but it is super malicious, and that’s why you end up shutting off. “I want to shut my door, sit on my own, and I don’t want anyone.”’
Fans will learn a lot more about some of the biggest boybands ever in the documentary (Picture: Lorne Thomson/Redferns)
Over 20 years after Five released their last single with all five members, life is relatively back to normal for Ritchie. His friendships and relationships are authentic, and importantly he ‘doesn’t give a f**k’.
Still, it took a long time to stop being angry at the extreme conditions the boys endured for what turned out to be very little pay off – at least financially.
‘Sometimes I’d go over ticket sales versus people that turned up, and then how much we earned and realised “something’s off here” but you couldn’t get to the bottom of it,’ says Ritchie.
‘I was definitely angry for quite a while about, no doubt that but where’s anger going to get you?’
Also sharing their alarming tales from life at the top in Boybands Forever are Robbie Williams, as well as members from 911, Damage, Westlife, Blue, and East 17.
Boybands Forever airs tonight at 9.15pm on BBC Two and is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
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