Busted star James Bourne has pulled out of the Busted Vs McFly tour due to an undisclosed medical condition.
The rival Noughties pop rock groups will hit the road this September and October for a run of gigs that will aim to discover which of the two are the better band.
However, Bourne has confirmed he has been forced to step back because he is “not in good enough health to play these shows”.
The news comes less than 24 hours before the bands are due to kick off the battle tour on Tuesday (16.09.25) at bp pulse LIVE in Birmingham.
Bourne, whose bandmates Charlie Simpson and Matt Willis will still perform without him, is hoping he’ll be able to rejoin the tour “further down the line”.
In a statement on Instagram, he said: “The VS tour kicks off tomorrow night in Birmingham and as excited as I’ve been all year for this tour to begin.
“I’m really sorry to say that over the last 8 days it has become clear that I am not in good enough health to play these shows.
“There’s a lot of information I still don’t have about my condition but my bandmates, management and I are unanimous in deciding that I should focus on the medical stuff for now.
“I really hope I can be in a position to come back further down the line. It’s still going to be an amazing show and I will miss being there! See you all as soon as possible.”
McFly bassist Dougie Poynter recently said he and his bandmates – Tom Fletcher, Harry Judd and Danny Jones – will get extremely competitive with Busted and will be pouncing around like wrestlers.
Speaking to Guitar.com, he said of the preparations: “Last week we started talking with our production people about how we actually want the show to flow and what kind of stupid stuff we can get away with.
“I think the nature of both of our bands, we can get away with doing some theatrical things every now and again. I mean we all play instruments, so there’s only tiny moments, or like, ‘How can one member get from one side of the arena to the other? Is there some sort of magic trick we can do?’ It’s very WWE, so we want to incorporate that as much as possible in the two teams.”
Busted frontman Charlie Simpson previously joked McFly would be like a “support” act to Busted on the joint tour, just as they were during the Year 3000 hitmakers’ 2004 gigs.
He quipped to The Sun: “We said, ‘We don’t want to go out again, but we will if we have to take you on. You can support us one more time, yes. Just like you did in 2004.'”
But McFly’s Harry Judd joked: “To be honest, these guys have obviously had their 20th anniversary and rinsed that and I think they’re a bit short on ideas, so they needed us and we felt charitable.”
McFly and Busted previously became McBusted, when Fletcher, Jones, Judd and Poynter, joined Willis and Bourne to form a supergroup.