It’s been quite the week for noughties boyband nostalgia after Marcel on Love Island told someone he used to be in Blazin’ Squad approximately once every 30 seconds.
Marcel, love, we get it. Unlike your fellow contestants who are about 15 and have no idea what you’re on about.
But now Russell Brand has turned our attention to another boyband – nineties and noughties pop legends 5ive.
In an interview, Russell made us imagine a bizarre alternative universe where he was a member of now defunct (though probably preparing for a reunion tour/ comeback/ fly-on-the-wall show on ITVBe) boyband 5ive.
Russell, who last year had a baby daughter Mabel with partner Laura Gallacher, made the revelation that he once auditioned to be in the band.
He thought about recreating the magic moment on James Corden’s Late Late Show but decided no one wanted to see it (we did).
“I believe I sang More Than Words by the band Extreme.
“I’ll recreate it if you want but it was a disaster then, and I think it would be even worse now,” he laughed to James (but seriously, we wanted to see it).
Read More: What band’s that that you were in again, Marcel?
There was a serious side to Russell’s tale though, as he admitted that he made the move for pop fame when he was high on drugs.
“As a young man I made many mistakes,” he said.
“During one of my frenzies brought on by the methamphetamine, I thought that perhaps I’d do rather well in the boyband 5ive.”
While eventual 5ive members Sean Conlon, Ritchie Neville, Abz Love, Scott Robinson and Jason Brown then went on to produce awesome pop classics for people to dance to in student unions when very drunk on cheap vodka (just us?) Russell obviously took a different path.
Later, he became famous as a comedian and presenter and a user of unusual words in interesting sentence structures.
Read more: Look which other boyband star is back on telly!
Which would have made all those interviews 5ive did in various teen pop mags a lot more bizarre.