EAST 17: HARD AS NAILS

Whats more tiresome than children in back-to-front baseball caps pretending to be tough? Adults recalling their days as kids in back-to-front baseball caps and still pretending to be hard, that's what. Tony Mortimer out of East 17, for instance:

“Robbie and the other Take That boys would not have lasted five minutes in East 17 — it was that full on we nearly didn’t make it.”

Erm... you didn't make it; your band fell to pieces because one of you got so drugged he forgot you weren't meant to tell the press about it. One you ended up "falling" under his own carwheels after a meal of potatoes. None of you have got any bloody money.

But Tony, the only band member still financially secure, admits they are lucky to be alive. He confessed: “We killed off boy bands. But East 17 almost destroyed me."

You killed off boy bands, did you? What the hell are Westlife, then? Busted? McFly?

Breaking up, though, was hard to do:

“If you walk out of the house everyday and hundreds of people mob you it has a mental effect.

“The day after we split I had nothing to get out of bed for and when I did I got hassle. So I stayed indoors up until only two and a half years ago."

The problem here, surely, is not that you were in a boyband, but that you had nothing in the way of what Denis Healy called a hinterland - you can't really blame anyone that when your job went, you had nothing else in your life: indeed, you were in a sweeter place than most people who get made redundant as you had a bit of cash behind you.

One of the other things that irritates about made band members - they talk like we, the little people, don't know what it's like to lose a job.

music brian harvey tony mortimer east 17