Pop tales
When heat heard the news about a juicy book that was to unravel the innermost pop-culture secrets from the ’90s and noughties, the adrenaline kicked in almost instantaneously.
Reach For The Stars 1996–2006: Fame, Fallout And Pop’s Final Party by Michael Cragg had our gossip radar beeping from the moment we glanced over the enticing contents page. We were gagging to skip ahead to the 13th chapter to uncover just how Girls Aloud managed to tear up the rulebook, but we had plenty of jaw-droppers to process first.
Pop fanatics across the country grew up with a slew of iconic bands such as the Spice Girls, Blue and S Club 7, and while you may feel like you know everything about the icons that soundtracked your youth, prepare to be left open-mouthed as we unearth some of the finest secrets from the pop-music landscapeofthose heady times…
1 Michael describes Richard “Biff” Stannard as being “responsible for some of the biggest and best songs from this period” – and the Spice Girls were fortunate to secure his expertise as a songwriter. However, the inspiration for the catchy phrase “zig-a-zig-ah” came from Mel B, and it turns out Scary Spice attached a very cheeky connotation.Biffrevealed, “Of course zig-a-zig-ah is about sex! I think people figured it out, because whenever they’d perform it, Mel B would always do that thing with her legs, which looked pretty sexual.”
2 It’s hard to imagineVictoria Beckham ever having a run-in with the law, but there was a time – at the peak of Spice Girls’ staggering fame in 1997 – when Posh did not quite live up to her moniker. Marketing director Peter Loraine branded her “so funny” after she got her knickers in a twist in a rather interesting way. Peter recalled, “She told me one day she’d got up really early and had been pulled over by the police because she was driving too fast. She said she tied her hair up with a pair of knickers as she had to get out of the car.”
3 If you pull up Russell Brand’s Wikipedia page, it lists his profession as comedian and actor. But according to 5ive’s Scott Robinson, Mr Brand considered singing to be something else he could have a stab at. Scott is adamant that Russell rocked up to the auditions. “He was there,” the singer claimed. “He denies that now, which is funny because he’s done some dodgy things in his career and auditioning for 5ive isn’t the worst thing he’s done.”
4 Signing a record contract does not guarantee endless spending at your heart’s content – and 5ive quickly found that out the hard way. “Even when money was coming in, we were given £100 a week to live on,” Scott recalled. “Sean [Conlon] used to hoard it. After about five weeks, I’d spent all my money on beer. I would go into
