Rochelle Humes wouldn’t let daughter join a pop band at the age of 12 like she did when she became a member of S Club Juniors.
The 28-year-old star got a spot in the group after auditioning on a reality TV show which aired on CBBC in 2001 organised by Simon Fuller, the former manager of the Spice Girls and S Club 7.
Originally S Club Juniors – also comprised of Jay Asforis, Daisy Evans, Calvin Goldspink, Stacey McClean, Aaron Renfree, Hannah Richings and Frankie Bridge, who also joined Rochelle in The Saturdays – were supposed to just support S Club 7 at one show on their ‘S Club Carnival Tour’ but they became an act in their own right, releasing two albums and appearing in four TV series.
Although Rochelle is very grateful her mother allowed her to be part of the pop act she isn’t sure she’d let Alaia-Mai – her four-year-old daughter with husband Marvin Humes – follow in her footsteps.
In an interview with BBC Radio 2, she said: "I remember Simon Fuller walking in and the rest of the band, and Nicki Chapman and I remember them saying to us, ‘We thought this is really great, we want to make a group.’ My mum looked as if to say, ‘I’m not letting you do this.’ And I literally remember saying to my mum, ‘If you don’t let me do this,’ and I was 12, ‘I’m never gonna talk to you ever again.’ So dramatic! Anyway she let me, she did her research and found all about it. Obviously it’s a massive thing, I probably wouldn’t let my child do it now. It’s a massive thing, if you don’t know as well, to let your kid go into. And she did and I’m thankful that she did, because it opened me up into this whole world really."
Rochelle – who also has eight-month-old daughter Valentina with former JLS singer Marvin Humes – admits she’s the only person in her family who is an attention seeker, but she appreciates her mother’s down-to-earth nature as it has always kept her grounded.
Recalling her days performing with S Club Juniors, she said: "My mum’s so un-pushy, she’s still like it now. I’m the weird one in the family, my mum’s a paramedic, my sister’s a nurse so they just think I’m so attention seeking and full of it … You know we’d be performing Wembley Arena, to thousands of people, and then she’d get me home that night and be like, ‘Your room’s a mess, get in there and clean it.’"
Rochelle also thinks it’s amazing that she and her school friend Frankie, 28, both got spots in S Club Juniors together and then were also bandmates again in The Saturdays years later.
She said: "We went to the S Club Juniors audition, and the queues were like, I guess how ‘The X Factor’ is, the queues were just insane. Full of kids, we were there all day, we sat through the whole thing, me and Frankie and we ended up being in the group together and then in The Saturdays together. We went to the same little school. Amazing!"
Rochelle Humes wouldn’t let her daughter join a pop group
