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the four who remained, Victoria was by far the rudest about Michelle, describing her voice as ‘cruise-ship operatic’, her dancing as ‘having less rhythm than a cement mixer’ and saying that she ‘couldn’t be arsed to improve’. The normally more outspoken Mel B described her as ‘sweet, very upper class and very well turned out’. In fact, Michelle was probably more posh than Victoria, although she didn’t have the wardrobe full of designer labels. Michelle remarked, ‘Victoria had some beautiful clothes.’

      Michelle has made her own way in music. She has recorded her own songs, acted as a backing singer for Ricky Martin and Julio Iglesias and presented for Channel 4. She once said, ‘Of course I regret I’m not a multi-millionaire like them. But at the time I left the group I knew I was doing the right thing – and I still think it was the right thing.’

      Eight years after she left, Chris and Shelley were in the Pitcher and Piano bar in Richmond when he recognised the waitress. It was Michelle. He recalled, ‘We shared a fond welcome and had a good chat.’ By that time, they both had cause for some regret. She would continue to be involved in music by hosting club nights before eventually marrying Hugh Gadsden, the manager of Madness.

Michelle’s departure created a vacancy. Chris and Bob didn’t go back to their original shortlist but decided to try to find someone new. They still wanted a five-piece band but they couldn’t face going through a drawn-out audition process again just to find one girl so they asked Pepi Lemer if she could think of anyone. She could – one of her former students, Abigail Kis, a half-Hungarian girl with a stunning, soulful voice.

      She proved to be a non-starter. She had a steady boyfriend who, by all accounts, was not that keen on her moving into the house in Maidenhead. She also had a place at university to study performing arts, which seemed a better option for her. With hindsight, she was probably a fraction too young, and putting a boyfriend first was not in keeping with the ethos of the rest of the band. She became another ‘fifth’ Spice Girl, observing sadly, ‘I would have loved to be that famous. Every time I see them I think, “It could have been me.”’

      While they searched for the right replacement, there was some good news for Chris when Victoria told him she had decided once and for all that her future lay with his all-girl band and not with Persuasion. She had talked things over with her parents and realised that everything was much more professional with the Herberts and she could not keep both going if she was going to continue living in Maidenhead. This was business and she seemed to have no compunction in ditching her former bandmates.

Nothing was etched in stone as far as the make-up of the new group was concerned. It seemed a good idea, however, that the fifth member should be the youngest – thereby lowering the average age of the five. It was back to the drawing board for Pepi, whose next thought was a bubbly blonde girl she had taught three years previously at Barnet College. She remembered that her name was Emma Bunton but, in those pre-Facebook days, had no idea how to contact her. She had to pop into the college to search through old records before eventually coming up with a phone number. Emma’s mother, Pauline Bunton, answered and Pepi explained that she wanted to invite her daughter to try out for a new girl group.

      Emma was thrilled to be asked. She had the advantage of being another stage-school veteran and had attended many auditions. Chris drove over to North London to meet her and her mum, and they had a pleasant chat over a coffee before going back to Pepi’s house where Emma sang ‘Right Here’, a top-three hit in the UK the previous year for the all-girl American R&B trio SWV (Sisters with Voices). It was a good choice. Chris Herbert thought she was perfect: ‘She was very cute, very nice with a sweet voice, a very “pop” voice. I really liked her character a lot. It was one of those light-bulb moments when I realised she was definitely something we didn’t have. It was immediate for me.’

      Chris had to explain, though, that it all depended on her being accepted by the other four. They would have to look at the dynamic between her and the current residents of the house in Maidenhead. One thing stood in her favour – that she was from a working-class background in North London. When Emma Lee Bunton was born in the Victoria Maternity Hospital, Barnet, on 23 January 1976, her father, Trevor, was a delivery driver. She would be the youngest of Touch but was actually older than Michelle.

      Trevor subsequently became a milkman and sometimes took his daughter out on his rounds during the school holidays. Her mother did her bit for the family finances, working as a home help for a well-to-do local woman. Pauline was raised in Barnet but her father – Emma’s grandfather – was Irish, Séamus Davitt, from County Wexford. They were Catholic and Emma had a traditional baptism and attended mass growing up. Sadly, she never knew her grandfather, who died before she was born.

She has an older half-brother, Robert Bunton, from Trevor’s first marriage and she would go to the park and watch them play football in the local league at weekends. Her younger brother, Paul James, known as PJ, is four years her junior and the two of them are very close. They shared a room until Emma was twelve. Because money was tight they sometimes needed to share their dinner as well.

      Emma might have been the baby of the new band but, more relevantly, she had the most extensive CV. She seemed to have been in showbusiness all her life. She was a natural blonde and a very photogenic little girl, who was much in demand as a child model, getting work from the age of two onwards.

      Pauline had done some modelling when she was a child so it seemed natural to sign her daughter up with the prestigious Norrie Carr agency, putting aside Emma’s earnings so that she would have a nest egg when she was older. In the end the money proved invaluable when she needed fees for theatre school. Over the years Emma featured in so many promotions that it was a rare household that hadn’t come across a picture of her cherubic face plugging some product or business, or on the front cover of a magazine in the dentist’s surgery.

      She was the poster girl for Outspan oranges, the girlfriend of the Milky Bar Kid, smiling sweetly on the tins of Heinz Invaders spaghetti-shapes and standing next to a pretend mum in ads for Mothercare and Argos. She was a cover girl for Woman’s Weekly and Womancraft magazine. She was the face of best-selling games including and, arguably most famously, the timeless favourite Pop Up Pirate. One of the agents at Norrie Carr said, ‘She never stopped working and had that special something we were looking for. She had a twinkle in her eye and loved the camera.’

Hardly a week would go by when Emma wasn’t whisked out of school so that her mum could take her off to a shoot. If it was in the West End, she always made sure to include a trip to the Science or Natural History Museum to make sure her little girl wasn’t falling behind in her educational progress. She was at St Theresa’s, a Catholic primary school in East End Road, Finchley, close to the North Circular Road.

      Emma loved her modelling days, spending time with the other boys and girls or sometimes inviting her own friends along to join her. Occasionally someone at school might be jealous if they saw her picture in a catalogue but mostly she had a very happy childhood. It helped that she developed such a close bond with her mum. Emma said, ‘She’s got such a soft nature, so unselfish. But she’s also a very solid person.’ The biggest drama for her parents came when she was hit by a car at the age of four. She needed hospital treatment and still has a scar on her leg as a permanent reminder of a lucky escape.

      One huge bonus of modelling was that every year from the age of about six until she was twelve she was one of ten boys and girls chosen to shoot a catalogue abroad for two weeks. Family summer holidays were always spent in a caravan in Clacton-on-Sea so trips to Corsica, Lanzarote and Mallorca were very exciting for a young girl.

Emma’s other great love was dancing. She had started ballet classes aged three and had a natural talent. When she was five, her mum had spotted a flyer locally for the Kay School of Dance in Finchley and managed to enrol her daughter even though she was younger than the other children there. She was always far more interested in ballet, tap and disco dancing than in taking part in any sports at school. Her parents could only afford the ballet lessons but the school gave her the other classes for free. Her early ambition to be a professional dancer was dashed at fourteen when she fell and injured her back. By coincidence, when she was eight she came across

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