Five sit down with YOUR EX’s Oliver Hall to reflect on the pressures of sudden fame, burnout, and reclaiming the joy of their success.
When I ask Five whether they’re secretly harbouring the one thing that would truly complete their boy band mythology, a member coming out as gay, Jay doesn’t hesitate.
“Yes! We all are and we’ve saved it for this to tell everyone,” he laughs, before adding, “It would appear that we are one of those unicorns!”
The mysterious ‘all straight boy band’ unicorn.
But as the laughter settles, the band begin to explain that behind the success were five teenagers navigating an experience none of them were remotely prepared for.
Nearly three decades after they first formed, and ahead of their Keep On Movin’ 2026 Tour, their first tour in 25 years, Five are confronting that reality with a clarity they didn’t have the luxury of back then.
The Dream and The Reality
“The absolute antithesis,” Jay says, when I ask how the reality of being in Five compares to the fantasy.
Ritchie elaborates. “You see it as walking out on stage in front of 100,000 people, and that part is exactly like the dream. But there were so many other factors you could never predict. You didn’t realise most of your time wasn’t spent doing that.”
Instead, their lives became an endless blur of early mornings and late finishes. “You’d start at four in the morning and finish at one the following morning,” he says. “Very quickly, you were very, very tired.”
The success came almost immediately. While contemporaries like Take That and Boyzone spent a year touring schools and clubs, slowly building an audience, Five were thrown straight into the deep end.
“We got into the band in May, and by Christmas we were in the charts,” Scott tells me. “Our first-ever gig was on an arena stage.”
There was no gradual adjustment. Just instant visibility, scrutiny, and isolation.
“When I left home to join the band, I lost contact with my teenage mates,” Sean tells us. “I didn’t have any friends outside the band, and I couldn’t meet any new ones because I just didn’t know who to trust.”
“It still affects me now. I do everything alone unless I’m with the guys or with my kids.”
Fame, at that level and at that age, doesn’t just give you a new life. It erases the old one.
Thrown Into the Fire
Perhaps the most shocking revelation isn’t how young they were, but how unsupported they were.
“We joke about it now,” Jay says, “that our media training and psychological introduction to what was ahead lasted about 45 minutes in a room above a pub.”
That was it. No sustained guidance. No emotional support systems. Just a brief warning and then a global career.
Scott puts their youth into perspective by comparing it to his own son. “When the band ended, I was only 22,” he says. “When I look at my son, at 22 he could just about make beans on toast. You don’t really find yourself properly until 25. We were lost for many years.”
Being constantly visible didn’t create confidence. In many ways, it destroyed it.
“Being visually thrust in front of everyone, I felt very self-conscious,” Ritchie says. “I was probably the least confident I’ve ever been in my life.”
And yet, paradoxically, their lack of polish became part of their appeal.
Because they weren’t media trained, they were honest, sometimes disastrously so.
“We were just real,” Scott explains. “If something was upsetting us, we wouldn’t wait until the cameras were off. We’d discuss it there and then.”
Jay nods. “It was part of what people loved about us. But it was also part of what brought us down.”
He recalls a meeting with legendary music executive Clive Davis, who was head of Arista Records, the label that would launch Five’s career in America. Davis played them a demo of Whitney Houston’s then-unreleased It’s Not Right But It’s Okay and asked for their honest opinion.
“We didn’t like it and we told him that,” Jay says simply. “And that really didn’t go down well.”
In 1998, Five would release three singles in the US before being dropped by Arista. Only one, When The Lights Go Out, was a hit. A stark contrast to their 11 Top 10s and three Number Ones in the UK.
Before They Were Five
Before the fame, the exhaustion, and the screaming fans, Five were just kids with different dreams.
Abs grew up immersed in hip hop and soul, shaped by a multicultural upbringing that made the band’s “streetwise” positioning feel natural. Sean imagined himself as a singer-songwriter in the mould of Seal. Scott loved The Backstreet Boys but needed his dad to literally drag him out of bed, hungover and reluctant, to attend the audition that would change his life.
Jay was chasing hip hop credibility in Manchester, sending demos to record labels and getting nowhere.
Ritchie, meanwhile, was eclectic, listening to everything from Grunge to House to Madonna.
They met, queuing outside a Covent Garden dance studio with thousands of other auditioning hopefuls, and became one of the defining boy bands of their era.
None of them could have understood what they were stepping into.
The Things They Wish They’d Known
When I ask what advice they’d give their younger selves, the answers are immediate and revealing.
“Run!” Abs laughs.
Scott’s is gentler. “I would tell younger Scott that everything will be okay.”
Ritchie wishes he’d paid more attention to the business side. “We’d sit with solicitors about contracts, nodding along, then get in the van and say, ‘Did anyone catch one fucking word of that?’”
Sean’s answer cuts deepest.
“More compassion for each other,” he says. “We were so young and completely consumed by what we were going through. You think you’re the only one going through it.”
Despite everything, there were moments of genuine magic. Opening the BRIT Awards with Queen. Playing Rock in Rio, and then staying up all night getting drunk with Liam Gallagher. Wandering through quiet Tokyo streets at 4am, jet lagged, and staring up at huge skyscrapers.
But trauma has a way of overshadowing joy.
“For some reason the hard times scar your mind more,” Sean reflects. “Then I see footage of us laughing together and think, we did have beautiful times.”
Jay describes massive gaps in his memory from those years, entire milestones lost to exhaustion.
“We just weren’t present,” he tells us.
Reclaiming Their Success
When Five disbanded, still at the height of their success, it wasn’t because they’d stopped succeeding. It was because they couldn’t keep surviving it.
“We left because we were genuinely getting towards nervous breakdowns,” Ritchie says.
Now, decades later, they’re returning, not as boys, but as men who understand what they lived through.
“That’s why I’m enjoying myself so much now,” Scott says. “I wish I could have lived in the moment more. That’s what I’m doing this time.”
Jay agrees. “Now we’re genuinely appreciative of being allowed to do this again.”
In an era obsessed with nostalgia, reunions often feel like attempts to recreate the past. But Five aren’t trying to be who they were. They’re trying to finally reclaim and enjoy their success properly.
Boy bands were always about fantasy, about selling the illusion of closeness, the men you wanted to date and the friends you wanted to have. But the truth, as Five know, was always far messier and more human.
They weren’t unicorns. Just five young men trying to survive a dream that arrived faster than they could understand it.
And now, for the first time in 25 years, they get to step back into it, not as who they were, but as who they’ve become.
