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Rochelle Humes insisted it was hard to live the ‘expected lifestyle’ in The Saturdays as she revealed she made more money in S Club Juniors.
The presenter, 37, found fame at 12-years-old in the early noughties alongside S Club Juniors stars Frankie Bridge, Aaron Renfree, Jay Asforis, Stacey Franks, Calvin Goldspink, Daisy Shelvey and Hannah Richings.
The youngsters aged between 11 and 14 went on to be successful with hits such as Automatic High while working together from 2001 to 2003.
Rochelle and Frankie later auditioned and got into The Saturdays in 2007 alongside members Mollie King, Una Healy, and Vanessa White.
However, despite successfully topping the charts on multiple occasions with songs like ‘All Fired Up’ and ‘Higher’ the five girls never saw big money and were just given a ‘salary’.
Speaking to Jamie Laing on his Great Company podcast, Rochelle said: ‘I made more money in S Club Juniors than I did in The Saturdays.
‘The music industry… the money just went out of it. It wasn’t the same space to be in anymore.’
The now mother-of-three explained how the girls were expected to live a certain type of lifestyle, but most of her money actually came from brand deals and touring rather than the group’s singles.
‘When someone says your record deal is X amount of money, that doesn’t mean that’s what we’re making. That means they’ll put this money into the album, pay these producers, the marketing budget.’
She continued: ‘For a period of music artists were making money touring. The tours and the brand deals was where you would make your money. The records weren’t for us.
‘So we’d be the face of a shampoo and all have our own scent – that’s where we’d make our money. Those brand deals were really important to us, and so was the touring.
‘But then record labels changed their whole strategy, and they would do what they would call 360 deals. So they would then also take a cut of the brand [deals], and then take a cut of the live performances.
‘You’ve got to remember everything you earn, split that in half, basically with tax and an agent. And then there’s five of you. You’re expected to live a lifestyle that you can’t always prop up.’
Rochelle went on to reflect on her years in the pop girl band, which split in 2014, and opened up about her dealings with the paparazzi, saying they would ‘be on the floor trying to get up our skirts.’
She explained: ‘When I started dating Marvin [Humes], he couldn’t believe it. You’ve got to remember he was in a boy band. I was in the girl band, but his experience was so different to mine.
‘We’d leave somewhere, and he would stand behind me when I got in the car. Photographers would get on the ground and try and take photos up your skirt, it’d be awful.
‘It was a really strange period of time that we weirdly were just a bit accepting. We weren’t earning enough money. It wasn’t like, “Okay, I don’t like this anymore, let’s stop this”‘.
Elsewhere in the honest chat, Rochelle said she will ‘never respect’ her absent father Mark Piper after he walked out on her as a baby.
The presenter said she doesn’t ‘really remember’ her estranged father as he left her as a baby but for many years she was left feeling ‘angry and upset’.
It wasn’t until Rochelle and her husband Marvin Humes welcomed their first child, daughter Alaia-Mai in 2013, that she finally lost all ‘respect and curiosity’ about her father.
Despite being without a male role model, the This Morning star’s uncle Paul Ince, who captained England football and played for Manchester United and West Ham, stepped up for her.
Rochelle said: ‘My dad left when I was one, I don’t really remember him.
‘I remember waiting for him at the window on the weekends which ended quickly because he just didn’t come and there were so many years I was upset and angry about it.
‘The day I had Alaia I instantly had zero curiosity to get to know my dad and I would never respect him as a person, he is not someone I would choose to spend time with.’
Mark went on to have three children, Love Island star Sophie Piper, as well as Lili and Jake, whom Rochelle reconnected with after 23 years.
‘As a kid I did find it hard, he went on to have three other children, who are now, we are obsessed with each other but from the outside I saw he was there for them and not me’, she said.
Rochelle went on to explain how her famous footballer ‘uncle’ Paul, who isn’t a blood relation but was always someone she ‘looked up to’ and eventually he walked her down the aisle when she married Marvin in 2012.
‘My uncle was there for me, he was that male presence for me, but my mum wore a lot of hats’, she began.
‘But my uncle Paul would come and he played football for England, he is Paul Ince and was playing for England, he gave me away at my wedding and Marv had to ask Paul to marry me.
‘It was exciting I used to go watch West Ham every weekend but he was really that male role model that I looked up to.
‘I never realised he was cool until secondary school. Claire his wife and my mum are best friends, he’s not actually my blood uncle but my mum was the first one to have a child and that was it, he was always just around and always is and always will be.
‘I never felt like I didn’t have a male figure around because he always made time for me, like every single weekend.’
