Rochelle Humes: Life in The Saturdays was like a hamster wheel

3 January 2019

Rochelle Humes says being in The Saturdays was like living on a "hamster wheel" because it was continuous hard work.

Rochelle Humes

The 29-year-old singer-turned-presenter was a member of the girl group alongside Frankie Bridge, Una Healy, Mollie King and Vanessa White and she has opened up about what things were like in the band and has claimed that she had no control over her own life because of the relentlessly hectic schedule.

Rochelle admits that the lack of flexibility that the girls had in their professional lives that made them all agree to go on hiatus in 2014.

Speaking in the January issue of Cosmopolitan UK, Rochelle said: "It was like a hamster wheel. We had no idea when our next day off would be. You don't have control, [you're told] when your next single has to be delivered by.

"Even with days off, in a group, you all have to agree on the same [one] - one person is like, 'Well, my boyfriend needs to take holidays then', and someone else, 'Well, mine can only go next week.' At the end that's when we decided to slow it down."

Rochelle started her pop career in 2001 as a member of S Club Juniors - which was a spin-off of the English pop group S Club 7 - alongside her future Saturdays bandmate Frankie.

And the 'What About Us' hitmaker admits her time in her first group did not prepare her for just how hard she would have to work to build a fan base to make The Saturdays successful.

She added: "When we started it was like, 'Jeez, we do so, so much. [From S Club Juniors] I'd had this preconceived idea that it was 'do some work, have a break', but we didn't get fame overnight on a reality show. We had to build our fan base. We worked hard just for people to be aware of who we were.

"We'd get corporate gigs for some Christmas party and everyone would be in suits and really stiff, and we were like, 'Why have you booked The Saturdays?!' We'd just look at each other and carry on. We'd get changed in loos, never had a dressing room, didn't stay in hotels, just drove back. [It meant] when things started going well we were like, 'Oh my goodness', rather than just leaving a [reality] show and thinking that's how things go."

The full interview with Rochelle appears in the February 2019 issue of Cosmopolitan which is on sale from Wednesday (03.01.19).