Paul Cattermole feared his life was overly defined by S Club 7 and worried that interest would dry up after he turned 40.
The singer, who has tragically died at the age of 46, needn't have worried because tickets for the band's reunion tour were in such high demand that they sold out almost instantly.
The phenomenal demand saw three extra dates being added to the 25-year anniversary tour that promised to see Paul and his bandmates Bradley McIntosh, Hannah Spearritt, Jo O'Meara, Jon Lee, Rachel Stevens, and Tina Barrett reunited.
Paul couldn't have predicted the warm response to the 15-date tour that would see the band perform in arenas across the UK and Ireland.
And just four years before the pop legend's death, Paul voiced his concern that interest in S Club 7 would one day dry up.
“It was five years of my life,” he told The Guardian in 2019.
“I definitely thought, when I was 20, that by the time I was 40 it would be a done thing. And it’s not … I’ve been answering S Club questions for 20 years.”
The pop group shot to fame in the late 1990s with their BBC television series, Miami 7.
The theme music to the show, Bring It All Back, was their debut single and it quickly reached number one in the UK charts, selling more than 600,000 copies and was was certified Platinum.
Over the next five years, S Club 7 had four number-one singles, a number one album, a Top 10 hit in America, and won two BRIT awards: British Breakthrough Act and Best British Single.
Paul was an S Club favourite - and broke hearts across the nation when it was announced he was quitting the band back in 2002.
"It had got to the point where things were being handled so badly, I had to go," Paul told The Guardian.
Paul reunited with some old school friends to form nu metal group Skua, but they split in 2003 after failing to sign a record deal.
Five years after S Club broke up, Paul started performing at nightclub, universities and holiday camps across the UK with Jo and Bradley as S Club 3.
The band's enduring success and huge comeback is a credit to Paul and part of his lasting legacy.
