Caroline Sullivan: That's Showbiz!
S Club are mystified how they only made £400,000 each to their manager's £50m. It's called talent. Most of us who aren't Catherine "A million isn't a lot to us" Zeta-Jones wouldn't mind earning £100,000 a year. If the job involved travel and TV appearances and if the alternative - because you're 18 and only averagely talented - was working in a call centre, it's more attractive yet.
Most of us who aren't Catherine "A million isn't a lot to us" Zeta-Jones wouldn't mind earning £100,000 a year. If the job involved travel and TV appearances and if the alternative - because you're 18 and only averagely talented - was working in a call centre, it's more attractive yet. But the now defunct manufactured band S Club (formerly S Club 7) have instructed lawyers to find out why they made "only" £400,000 each during four years together, despite selling 12 million albums.
The six former members have complained that, while they subsisted on just £2,000 a week, their manager, Simon Fuller, supposedly pocketed somewhere near £50m. Singer Hannah Spearritt's father claims Fuller got most of a £1.7m promo deal with BT Broadband, leaving the group with £40,000 apiece and a free phone. Each S Clubber got just £35,000 for their hit television show - less than the salaries of the tabloid journalists who write about them.
Meanwhile, Fuller, who also created the Spice Girls and the TV show Pop Idol, is the 359th richest person in the country, with a bank balance of £90m.
S Club obviously feel entitled to be upset. How galling was it for Hannah and her friends to watch their manager make a packet, while they were the ones at the coalface? Think of the damage inflicted on their impressionable psyches after spending 15 hours a day grinding through S Club's chirpsome repertoire (most of it written by others, so the group don't even get publishing royalties). It does sound gruelling, and most of us wouldn't do it for all the free phones in the world.
But then, most of us - let's say anyone who came of age before the advent of factory-made bands in the mid-90s - don't want to be manufactured pop stars. We recognise that the Pop Idol generation's take on fame, which they view as a cat does a particularly luscious mouse, is blind to the consequences.
Every wannabe should be forced to read I Owe You Nothing, the autobiography of Luke Goss from the 80s boyband Bros, who ended up virtually bankrupt. Bitter doesn't describe it. Or they should talk to Hear'Say, winners of the Popstars reality TV series, who found stardom unendurable and split up within 18 months.
But that's by the by. The fact is, Hannah wanted to be in S Club and competed against 10,000 others for her place. She got what she longed for, which was to make records and get "papped", as Heat magazine calls it, by showbiz columns.
And now that S Club have gone their separate ways, she is poised for a solo career. So what's the problem? Her dad says: "It's outrageous that these children have been phenomenally successful, yet earned so little." But these children, who are actually adults in their twenties, paid their money, as it were, and took their choice.
They owe Fuller big time. How do they think they landed four number-one singles and invitations to every tacky after-party in town? Why shouldn't Fuller be amply remunerated for his labours? He owned the factory, after all - they were just the production line. (He is even reported to have said, "I could put cardboard cut-outs of you on the stage and it wouldn't make any difference".)
If they had a problem with the owner's rules, they should have downed tools, as the American boyband *Nsync did in a similar situation, or gone to work for that little artisanal company across the road, Indie Credibility Industries. But ICI probably would have made them write their own songs and not let them go to shindigs with TV presenters and soap stars. So the choice was between fame and credibility. What a dilemma.
S Club must have wondered: "But what about Robbie Williams and the £80m he got for re-signing with EMI?" But Williams co-writes all his material, is enormously charismatic and has just sold out three shows (375,000 tickets) at Knebworth. There are only one or two Williamses per generation, and in fact, the Clubbers actually did very well by the standards of their genre. The Sun yesterday published a list of the 10 least-well-off manufactured stars, which claimed that Pop Idol runner-up Rosie Ribbons earned only £12,000 last year and the successful Liberty X are on just £35,000 each. Even teen-pop's inexplicable superstars, Atomic Kitten, take home no more than £150,000 a year.
Future battery-farmed outfits shouldn't go into it assuming they'll get rich. There have been calls for a managers' code of conduct to prevent the "exploitation" of young hopefuls. I agree. Such a code should spell out the truth: manufactured bands are just youth-training schemes to train up kids who wannabe famous.
With more reality-pop shows in the pipeline, managers such as Fuller are becoming significant youth employers. As long as the next S Club make an informed decision, they should be able to accept their lot for what it is: a well-paid apprenticeship for a career among the sort-of famous.
The six former members have complained that, while they subsisted on just £2,000 a week, their manager, Simon Fuller, supposedly pocketed somewhere near £50m. Singer Hannah Spearritt's father claims Fuller got most of a £1.7m promo deal with BT Broadband, leaving the group with £40,000 apiece and a free phone. Each S Clubber got just £35,000 for their hit television show - less than the salaries of the tabloid journalists who write about them.
Meanwhile, Fuller, who also created the Spice Girls and the TV show Pop Idol, is the 359th richest person in the country, with a bank balance of £90m.
S Club obviously feel entitled to be upset. How galling was it for Hannah and her friends to watch their manager make a packet, while they were the ones at the coalface? Think of the damage inflicted on their impressionable psyches after spending 15 hours a day grinding through S Club's chirpsome repertoire (most of it written by others, so the group don't even get publishing royalties). It does sound gruelling, and most of us wouldn't do it for all the free phones in the world.
But then, most of us - let's say anyone who came of age before the advent of factory-made bands in the mid-90s - don't want to be manufactured pop stars. We recognise that the Pop Idol generation's take on fame, which they view as a cat does a particularly luscious mouse, is blind to the consequences.
Every wannabe should be forced to read I Owe You Nothing, the autobiography of Luke Goss from the 80s boyband Bros, who ended up virtually bankrupt. Bitter doesn't describe it. Or they should talk to Hear'Say, winners of the Popstars reality TV series, who found stardom unendurable and split up within 18 months.
But that's by the by. The fact is, Hannah wanted to be in S Club and competed against 10,000 others for her place. She got what she longed for, which was to make records and get "papped", as Heat magazine calls it, by showbiz columns.
And now that S Club have gone their separate ways, she is poised for a solo career. So what's the problem? Her dad says: "It's outrageous that these children have been phenomenally successful, yet earned so little." But these children, who are actually adults in their twenties, paid their money, as it were, and took their choice.
They owe Fuller big time. How do they think they landed four number-one singles and invitations to every tacky after-party in town? Why shouldn't Fuller be amply remunerated for his labours? He owned the factory, after all - they were just the production line. (He is even reported to have said, "I could put cardboard cut-outs of you on the stage and it wouldn't make any difference".)
If they had a problem with the owner's rules, they should have downed tools, as the American boyband *Nsync did in a similar situation, or gone to work for that little artisanal company across the road, Indie Credibility Industries. But ICI probably would have made them write their own songs and not let them go to shindigs with TV presenters and soap stars. So the choice was between fame and credibility. What a dilemma.
S Club must have wondered: "But what about Robbie Williams and the £80m he got for re-signing with EMI?" But Williams co-writes all his material, is enormously charismatic and has just sold out three shows (375,000 tickets) at Knebworth. There are only one or two Williamses per generation, and in fact, the Clubbers actually did very well by the standards of their genre. The Sun yesterday published a list of the 10 least-well-off manufactured stars, which claimed that Pop Idol runner-up Rosie Ribbons earned only £12,000 last year and the successful Liberty X are on just £35,000 each. Even teen-pop's inexplicable superstars, Atomic Kitten, take home no more than £150,000 a year.
Future battery-farmed outfits shouldn't go into it assuming they'll get rich. There have been calls for a managers' code of conduct to prevent the "exploitation" of young hopefuls. I agree. Such a code should spell out the truth: manufactured bands are just youth-training schemes to train up kids who wannabe famous.
With more reality-pop shows in the pipeline, managers such as Fuller are becoming significant youth employers. As long as the next S Club make an informed decision, they should be able to accept their lot for what it is: a well-paid apprenticeship for a career among the sort-of famous.
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