How legendary UK boyband turned down Britney Spears’ hit Baby One More Time branding song ‘w**k’

NINETIES boyband 5ive have revealed they turned down the chance to release two huge pop hits at the height of their fame.

Some of the biggest heartthrobs from that era have come together for a new docuseries to reveal secrets from their chart-topping heyday.

5ive had a string of hits, including Keep On Movin’ and Everybody Get Up, but gave up caring, with Ritchie Neville and Jay Brown getting arrested for a bar fight in Dublin which they hoped would anger their bosses.

But Ritchie recalls: “The phone rings and it’s Simon Cowell. Oh s**t. Thinking he’s going to be like ‘What the hell?’.

“His exact words were, ‘Well f***ing done, you can’t f***ing buy publicity like that. This is amazing’.”

And the boys almost sabotaged their own success by rejecting tracks that went on to be hits for other artists — including Britney Spears.

Manager Chris Herbert says: “We brought the boys into the studio and said, ‘You’re going to listen to this song, it’s called Baby One More Time’.

“And the boys went, ‘It’s f***ing w**k’. This couldn’t get any worse.

“We also got offered Bye Bye Bye which then became a massive hit for NSYNC as well. The boys turned that one down.”

But the pace of life in the fast lane took a particular toll on Scott Robinson, who was away from his now-wife Kerry for long stretches.

On reaching a breaking point in 2001, he remembers: “I pinned one of the big cheeses at the record label up against his desk with my foot, crushing him into the wall, and said, ‘I will f***ing leave this band, you try and f***ing stop me’, with Simon Cowell trying to fight me off him.”

Simon, 65, admits: “We almost ended up in a fist fight. I was that close to punching him in the face.”

Scott adds: “I’d lost my mind. They had to call security and carry me out of the building kicking and screaming like a f***ing wild dog.”

Reflecting on when they split later in 2001, Ritchie says: “The big calling for me personally was, the prison sentence and nightmare will be over. I can just be Rich from Birmingham again.

“You were 100 per cent a commodity and a product.  That’s how you felt, almost like a plastic doll.”

The first two episodes of Boybands Forever are on BBC Two on Saturday at 9.15pm and 10.15pm.