For the first time in 12 years, S Club 7 brought it all back to the arena for their new headline show in Birmingham last night (May 7). It’s the walk down memory lane all of the fans were waiting for, and after the show we went backstage to the S Club Party Room (which is an actual thing) to have a brief catch up about their new pop extravaganza.

1. Generally, there were lots of feels right after the show.
“Now I’ve come out of shock, I’m alright now. I had a moment,” Jo laughed after the gig. “I feel like I’m on a high. And a little shellshocked, but in a good way. It was such a positive reaction,” said Tina. And Paul? “I feel relaxed, but tired!”

2. No wonder – it took three weeks to get to grips with all the choreography.
“It takes a little while for your brain to get back into gear into picking up routines and retaining that information,” Jon Lee said. “Back in the day we’d watch a routine and within one day we’d know it, whereas now it takes us a little bit longer and there’s a lot to take on board. I think by the third week, everyone clicked into gear and started remembering.”

3. But at one point, Bradley thought he couldn’t dance anymore.
“For a second, I thought I’d lost all co-ordination,” said Bradley. “I was like, same arm same leg, and was thinking, ‘Can I even f**king dance anymore? I can do this. I can do this!’ We got there in the end, y’know.”

4. And according to Tina, it’s the most choreography they’ve had to learn for an S Club show, like, ever.
“We had an amazing choreographer who pushed us really really hard, but I think we all enjoyed that to a point,” Hannah Spearitt explained. “Just getting really focussed and pushing ourselves further than actually we did back in the day.” Tina added: “We did more choreography in this show than we ever did before in our past shows. We wanted to do something extra, because I guess everyone was expecting something… we wanted to surprise them.”

5. IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: Jo’s voice is back. But it was never really gone to begin with.

“The voice was always there, it’s just I had a bad day,” says Jo of her Children In Need performance last November. “I was just nervous and then I was getting, ‘Oh, Jo can’t sing anymore’ and ‘Jo’s lost her voice’. “We hadn’t done live TV in so many years, and a lot had happened in those years, and it was quite a big thing,” Rachel Stevens said, before Jo concluded: “I got nervous and mucked up my singing, but I’m back! I mean, it’s knackered now, so we’ll see what happens tomorrow…”

6. And can we just talk about Paul’s surprising acoustic performance of ‘Reach’ for a moment, please?

“I stumbled on it a year ago messing around with some chords, found it out, decided this is the thing to do,” the S Club troubadour said with a smile. “But when it came to rehearsals I mucked it up a few times, and so lost my confidence with it and wasn’t going to do it. Then I thought, ‘No, I am going to do it.’ Recalling the moment he played it in front of thousands at Birmingham’s Genting Arena, he continued: “Once the crowd was in, it went so well. It’s the sort of thing that needed a crowd. I knew they might sing along, but I didn’t expect it at the beginning. The song is disguised; I’m not playing it in the same key or chords – and it’s all minor chords – so I didn’t expect it to be quite like that.”

7. Oh and Rachel Stevens plays some of her solo material in the show. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

“I absolutely loved it. I love ‘LA Ex’ and ‘Some Girls’, so to be able to perform them in front of the S Club fans [was great]. And I had to get the red ribbons out!”

8. However, one song wasn’t added to the setlist until three days ago.

“‘Hello Friend’ was a B-side but it never really got a release,” Bradley explained of the Jon and Jo duet. “I haven’t sung that song in 17 years,” Jon added. “I was 16 years old when I last did it.” But it wasn’t originally intended to be part of the show. “We added that song three days before the tour,” said Bradley. “We were literally like, ‘Something is missing here,’ and so Jo and I decided to do ‘Hello Friend’ and had the backing track made in 24 hours,” Jon finished.

9. But during rehearsals, it all got a bit emotional during one song in particular.

“There was a moment in rehearsals when we were singing ‘Goodbye’ and looking at the footage behind us, because we hadn’t seen it yet, and we all started crying,” Tina said, and we agree – the black and white footage does make a poignant backdrop for the song.

10. So why did they decide to put unreleased track ‘Rain’ on the updated version of their Greatest Hits?

“It was the one track the fans had been asking for that had never been released,” Jon said. “That’s the only reason, because they’ve not been able to get it anywhere. Bradley continued: “It was featured on our TV show for about 30 seconds, and I used to get bombarded with tweets saying, ‘Release ‘Rain’ – we love that song. Can we hear the full version?’ We sat around and said if we do release the album again, is there anything we could put on there? And it was ‘Rain’.”

11. The big question is though, what’s next for S Club 7?

“We are just enjoying the tour and enjoying the moment, and it’s quite unbelievable and surreal for us that we’re actually doing this right now,” Hannah said. “We’re literally just taking it in and enjoying it and we’ll see what happens.” Well, maybe Paul can get his guitar out and test the waters with some new songs? “I wouldn’t mind writing a song if everyone wanted to sing along,” he responds. “Obviously all of these suggestions are, like, yeah… But our heads are just so on the tour at the minute, but I’m sure we’ll be chatting about all those options,” said Hannah, putting a line under it all. For now…