‘If Jesus and Buddha had our work schedule, they'd have fallen out too': boyband Five on bullying, Britney and their blockbuster return

The Guardian

25-04-2025

In September 1998, amid a rocketing pop career that would end up with every one of their 11 singles reaching the UK Top 10, British boyband Five went missing. They were due to visit the US, where the lascivious When the Lights Go Out had got huge, but Five – Ritchie Neville (curtains), Scott Robinson (spiky hair), Abz Love (hats), Sean Conlon (baby-faced), and Jason 'J' Brown (eyebrow ring) – had other ideas. 'We decided we wanted a couple of days off,' says Scott, now without spikes and sporting a thick salt-and-pepper beard. 'So we booked our own flights back to the UK.'
Rather than visit family like everyone else, J returned to the band's shared house in Surrey. 'There were fans camping outside, literally in tents on the little lawn,' he says, shaking his shaved head, now minus the eyebrow ring. 'We needed to decompress – we were losing our minds. But all I had was people shouting through the letterbox at me for three days.' Whenever he wanted food he had to crawl from the living room to the kitchen on his stomach. 'Then they started turning against me: 'We know you're in there! We bought your album! You owe us!''
It was an intense time, and of all the returning bands from pop's Y2K zenith, Five seemed the least likely to reform with their original lineup. By the release of 2001's Let's Dance, the band's third and final UK No 1 single (after 1999's effervescent Keep on Movin' and 2000's Queen collaboration We Will Rock You), Sean had left, depressed and exhausted. With talk of mental health and duty of care nonexistent, the rest of the band were told Sean had glandular fever, and he was replaced in the song's video by a cardboard cutout. Scott was also at breaking point, having recently pinned their label boss Richard Griffiths against a wall.
Rumours swirled of physical fights backstage at ITV show CD:UK, and big studio bust-ups. Scott and Sean both accused J of bullying. In the recent BBC documentary Boybands Forever, Ritchie, an emotional Scott and a haunted-looking Sean made being in Five sound like torture. For a while they pushed the limits of numeracy, retaining their name as the lineup went down to four, then three. The trio version of Five – Scott (who sometimes also performed as 'a one-man Five'), Ritchie and Sean – even released an album, 2022's Time, and toured the nostalgia circuit.
Now, on a mild spring day, under a wooden gazebo in the garden of a west London pub, everyone's acting as if nothing happened. Suspiciously white teeth glisten and banter fills the air like Lynx. A 25-date arena tour is planned for later this year. 'When I get back in the room with these dudes,' J says, 'that real youthfulness is still there in all of us.'
As drinks are delivered, I ask how on earth this reunion happened. 'This is the first time we've all been truly aligned,' says Sean, now a youthful 43. 'Where it just feels right.'
They met up at a rented house just outside Birmingham towards the end of 2023. Apparently, nothing about reuniting was on the table. 'It was about being friends again,' Scott says. 'Reconnecting.'
Some people, I say, may assume it was also about the money. 'Absolute bullshit,' says Ritchie, his curtains drawn up into a small mohawk. 'If we wanted a cash grab we would have done it 15 years ago. By going back into the public domain as the five of us and confronting our fears, our demons, both individually and collectively, it's a genuine healing process.'
Abz, wearing a hat emblazoned with the word 'icon', picks up the theme: 'This is bigger than us. We've all had our moments, absolutely, but it has to happen. There's nothing stopping this.' To prove his point, he says he'd do the tour for nothing. 'That's on record!' Scott says, laughing.
'We hadn't been in the same room for 20-odd years,' continues Ritchie, who briefly emigrated to Australia after the band fell apart. Back then, he says, he was 'living like a ghost. I didn't want to be Rich from Five any more, I just wanted to be Rich from Birmingham.' An intriguing mix of new-age deep thinker and Hugo Boss-clad Alan Partridge, Ritchie quickly understood that he couldn't outrun his past.
'I heard Dave Grohl talking about how, after Kurt passed away, he'd gone to some mountains in Ireland to get his head together,' he explains. 'He saw this young Irish lad walking along wearing a T-shirt with Kurt Cobain's face on it, and he was like, 'I'm never going to escape it, I need to go back and face the music.' That's how Foo Fighters were born.' Five, he says, are 'kind of similar: you try to resist it, and it just persists. Fortunately or unfortunately, what we did was big and successful enough that we can't escape it, and we have embraced it.'
The reunion was 'very beautiful', Sean says. 'I can speak for myself and J: we were really close – we shared a room the first time around – so to have that many years apart, not speaking, was like this massive dark cloud.' He holds out his hands, as if cradling it, but the others are fooling around. 'I'm holding a dark cloud, actually!' he says, trying to bring order. 'Hold on to it, Sean!' laughs Abz. 'Then let it rain.'
Sean was only 15 when he left home and moved into the group's riotous shared house in Surrey. J was 23. During their appearance on ITV series The Big Reunion in 2012, Sean revealed that J once told him he had hated him from the moment he first heard him sing.
J says he wasn't aware at the time that Sean and Scott saw his behaviour as bullying. 'When I was scared, I'd peacock and puff my chest out and shout loud,' he says, and he was scared most of the time. 'Sometimes it would be taken as funny. But I was older, I was physically bigger, so if I'm stood there in front of these guys screaming, then younger dudes are going to feel overwhelmed. I realise why that was taken the way it was.'
'We've not brushed things under the carpet,' Sean continues, looking at J. 'We didn't get in a room and pretend nothing's happened. We're known for being the rowdy Five, but we're actually five sensitive souls. We speak very openly with each other.'
Increasingly famous, perpetually exhausted and innately rebellious, Five were never built to last. Created in 1997 by father and son management duo Bob and Chris Herbert – who had auditioned, nurtured and then lost the Spice Girls to rival managers – and signed by Simon Cowell, the plan was to create the antithesis of sensibly attired Irish stool-botherers Boyzone – and, later, Westlife. 'Boyzone were going to bring you a bunch of flowers and Five were going to fuck you against a wall down the side alley,' Chris Herbert told me in 2023.
'We were handpicked to be a harder-edged band,' says Ritchie. 'They literally said 'just be yourselves'.' J smiles: 'They got a little bit more than they bargained for.'
There was rivalry with Westlife, who were also A&R-ed by Cowell: 'We got Westlife so drunk once,' Ritchie says, 'they were running as fast as they could into a brick wall.' They were also terrible neighbours, as evidenced by their appearance on ITV's Neighbours from Hell. One night, after a launch party for unlikely label-mates Wu-Tang Clan, they returned home, having had 'a few sherbets', and decided to put up a 3ft poster of the rappers on the living room wall, using a pan for a hammer. 'In a terrace house,' J says. 'With the neighbours next door. With a baby.'
They're adamant that parts of their reputation have been exaggerated ('We weren't fighting every day,' sighs Ritchie) and they were more prone to heated arguments than physical fights. 'I did kick Rich in his arse once,' J says, 'and felt really bad as soon as I did it.' So bad, in fact, that he bought Ritchie a present to say sorry. 'His mum called my mum and said, 'You need to have a word with your son, he's run up and booted my Rich right in his backside.''
Everyone laughs. 'None of us five have ever stood and swung or thrown a punch at each other,' J continues. 'That's what's got to me over the years, reading a lot of the stuff. Yes, there were people screaming. Scott and I used to be in each other's faces, because I had a temper. We used to butt heads.'
'I'd never let anyone know I was feeling intimidated,' Scott says. 'If J was shouting at me, I'd go, 'Come on then.''
'Put it this way,' Ritchie says, 'if you put Jesus and Buddha in a room and gave them the work schedule that we had, I guarantee they'd fall out.'
While their British contemporaries were launched first in Europe, Five were immediately pitched as a global act. 'Backstreet Boys had hit massively in the States,' says Ritchie, 'so while we were releasing our first single, Clive Davis' – the industry legend behind dozens of stars from Janis Joplin to Alicia Keys – 'signed us in America. We tried to break the whole world in two years.' Abz, the quietest of the bunch, compares working in Japan to Sofia Coppola's film Lost in Translation: 'The loneliness, that hotel nothingness.'
America was briefly theirs for the taking. When the Lights Go Out was a hit, they had their own Disney special and Cowell was lining them up with big-time producers and songwriters. While they all concede that Cowell was an amazing A&R, he was also what Ritchie calls 'a proper winker'. Winker? 'He had it down to a fine art,' J explains. 'In meetings, there would be a brief moment where if the other four weren't looking, he'd shoot you a quick wink.' The chosen member would then assume they were the special one. 'That's what it was saying: 'You're my boy,'' continues Ritchie. 'You'd get outside and go, 'How many winks did you get?''
You sense the winks may have dried up after Five were offered the chance to record … Baby One More Time before Britney Spears, but instead called what became one of the biggest pop songs of all time 'fucking wank' in front of its creator, Max Martin. They also turned down an early version of Bye Bye Bye, which later helped 'NSync compete with Backstreet Boys. 'We would have done it in a different way,' J says of the Britney classic, 'but it just wasn't our thing. It didn't feel right.' Scott senses an opportunity for some banter: 'Or in the exact same way but with Rich in a skirt.' He chuckles, imagining a shot-for-shot remake of the video.
Ritchie has clearly heard this line before. 'Why is it always me in a skirt?' he harrumphs. 'You've got pretty legs,' J concludes.
Sean sits quietly, waiting for the banter bus to pull over. I tell him he seems much more confident now. 'I'm actually here this time,' he says, smiling. 'Before, I was overwhelmed. I had too much emotion, too much stimulation, and I just couldn't process it. I was 15.' He had assumed that everyone else in pop was happy, that they knew what they were doing, that they could handle it. He didn't realise the rest of his own band often felt the same way he did. 'I felt very isolated – I didn't feel like [they] were going through that. I felt like I was the only one. The bond was there [between us], and the deep love, but not the communication.'
Having been through the boyband wringer, they 'resonate' with acts that have arrived in their wake. Years ago at a festival, Ritchie bumped into Richard Griffiths, who was then managing One Direction. 'I said, 'How do they still look fresh?' We always looked absolutely done in,' Ritchie says. 'He went, 'Well, we've learned from your generation of bands how far you can push people.'' Griffiths' company Modest! now manages Five. 'I keep complaining to [them], saying can we work more, can we do more,' says J. That doesn't include new music, though, at least not yet. 'Never say never,' they say, but the focus is on the tour.
Talk turns to the death of Liam Payne. While Scott says they share a history as boyband members, Sean is clear that they didn't know him and to compare the two situations would be 'superficial'. He says he's not sure about the suggestion there should be a minimum age limit for prospective pop band members. 'Every child is different. My mum and dad had to make a judgment call on whether I did it and I would never change it in a million years. I was meant to go through it and that's why I'm here now.'
As they finish their drinks, Ritchie suddenly spots a robin. 'That's Derek,' he says. I laugh, thinking he's just named it randomly. 'I'm not even joking, it's Derek. That's my dead stepfather.' Suddenly, in unison, the band start singing, before holding up their glasses: 'Cheers, Derek!' They seem happy back in their Five bubble; older and wiser, but still teenagers somehow.
'All I ever wanted was to be happy in this formation of Five,' Scott says. 'I've already got that and we haven't stepped on stage yet. So when we're doing a promo day, I'm excited that I'm going to see the boys.'
'We're enjoying ourselves,' says Sean, a man reborn. 'We're having the time of our lives.'
Five's UK and Ireland tour begins 29 October at Utilita Arena, Cardiff