John Lee On 'Gay Times'
Gay Times September 10
Jon Lee
However you look at it S Club were a bit of a guilty pleasure. Arguably brilliant pop tunes and three not what you’d called unattractive guys in the group equals win. GT Investigates....
But after five years, numerous hit singles and albums, a plethora of TV shows and a feature film the S Club party was over. How did it all end? With Jon Lee doing a backflip and throwing up offstage at G-A-Y, that’s how. We’re sat in east London chatting over coffee and he casually drops in that the groups last ever gig was at the capital’s biggest gay night club. “A dodgy burger,” he explains as the reason for the upheaval in the wings.
Straight out of S Club, he managed a week off before spending a year playing his dream role, Marius in Les Miserables. “My family took me to see it when I was 13 or 14,” he recalls, “I remember seeing it then and thinking ‘I want that role’.”
Since leaving that production he’s been living in LA for a year (this time without the other six and the film crew that made up one of their TV shows, LA 7), which he describes as “kind of the start of my health kick.” Oh hi fit body!
“It’s not everyday you get oiled up in your pants and have someone taking pictures of you,” he deadpans about his GT shoot.
Following a recent stint in Casualty, I have that British problem of not being able to pigeonhole him. Singer? Actor? Lets go with Wikipedia – it calls Jon an ‘entertainer’.
“Oh does it? Good old Wikipedia,” he grins. “I’ve always done everything, I trained in musical theatre as a child, my first job was in musical theatre, S Club happened by accident, really, I was 15 at the time I’d just taken my GCSEs I was at Sylvia Young theatre school, I was looking in the paper for colleges to go to and I saw the ad for the audition for S Club and thought “oh, I’ll go for that”, and got it, and that was it really.”
And, I remind him, you end up being partly responsible for keeping Madonna off a number one spot.
“I think we did it twice actually,” he corrects me with a cheeky smile. “It was our little claim to fame, but then we got buggered by erm… “ he starts singing “I’m blue dabba dee dabba da” [Eiffel 65], they kept us off number one so… It’s not really a lot to shout about to be honest.”
Straight out of S Club, he managed a week off before spending a year playing his dream role, Marius in Les Miserables. “My family took me to see it when I was 13 or 14,” he recalls, “I remember seeing it then and thinking ‘I want that role’.”
Since leaving that production he’s been living in LA for a year (this time without the other six and the film crew that made up one of their TV shows, LA 7), which he describes as “kind of the start of my health kick.” Oh hi fit body!
“It’s not everyday you get oiled up in your pants and have someone taking pictures of you,” he deadpans about his GT shoot.
Following a recent stint in Casualty, I have that British problem of not being able to pigeonhole him. Singer? Actor? Lets go with Wikipedia – it calls Jon an ‘entertainer’.
“Oh does it? Good old Wikipedia,” he grins. “I’ve always done everything, I trained in musical theatre as a child, my first job was in musical theatre, S Club happened by accident, really, I was 15 at the time I’d just taken my GCSEs I was at Sylvia Young theatre school, I was looking in the paper for colleges to go to and I saw the ad for the audition for S Club and thought “oh, I’ll go for that”, and got it, and that was it really.”
And, I remind him, you end up being partly responsible for keeping Madonna off a number one spot.
“I think we did it twice actually,” he corrects me with a cheeky smile. “It was our little claim to fame, but then we got buggered by erm… “ he starts singing “I’m blue dabba dee dabba da” [Eiffel 65], they kept us off number one so… It’s not really a lot to shout about to be honest.”
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