, which was absolutely bonkers. I did it just for the fun of doing it. And I just thought, well, no one – besides my mum and a few friends and family – is going to hear it anyway. But when I play live now at my own gigs, I feel I can play a bunch of those songs without people going to the bathroom. With the old songs, it’s almost like they’re part of the wallpaper of certain people’s lives. I don’t see it as a negative in any way. I’m just lucky to be able to do gigs that people want to come to.
I wanted to prove something because a lot of people thought: “Well, if it’s a Stock Aitken Waterman act, it’s probably all make-believe and they’re not really any good anyway.” I wanted to step foot on real stages with a real band and actually go and do it. To say to people, look, this is what I actually started doing when I was a kid.
So, when my daughter was born, I was just looking at the way I lived and I just felt, “I don’t think this is for me”. Don’t get me wrong, although I enjoy it now and am relaxed and comfortable doing it, if the offer back then would’ve been playing in a great band as a drummer, I probably would have taken that instead.