Blue: All Rise: Our Story. Duncan James

Sun. I told Daniel, ‘I’m not having my photo taken with that man, he’s got blood on his hands.’ There were loads of press there, the Mirror’s 3AM Girls were hovering, but I didn’t care. TB had his photo taken with the others, but I just walked off. Naturally, my publicist was having kittens.

      I’m not well-educated, I’m often not informed enough to construct a rounded argument, I’m probably not going to be appearing on The Today Programme or Question Time any time soon, but I have my ideas, and even if a lot of them are half-baked, I will stick up for what I believe in, and I’m not a hypocrite.

      ANTONY

      So that all happened at the end of October, and all we could do was sit back and wait for the single to come out, see what damage had been done and if anyone was still prepared to buy our music. It was two weeks spent repairing everything – it felt like years.

      SIMON

      Then the single came out, went to number one, and so did the album a fortnight later.

      DUNCAN

      Then it felt like we were back on track, but we were all a bit bruised by the experience.

      LEE

      Everyone had been shouting, ‘Wanker, idiot’ at me in the street, and then going out and buying our albums. The press could say what they liked, but fans were saying, ‘We don’t care, we like their music.’ On the one hand, this success summed up everything I love about society, that music really does transcend arbitrary boundaries. On the other hand, it made me think there really was no such thing as bad publicity. We were number one, the boys still loved me, and the big bad press couldn’t bring me down. So I thought I was infallible, but that came back to bite me.

CHAPTER 5

       ‘THIS TEMPTATION’