S Club Dad in Fight for Fortune

While generating a £50million fortune for pop Svengali Simon Fuller, S Club have only taken home around £100,000 a year since they’ve been together. Now some of their parents believe that Fuller has taken advantage of the youngsters’ naivety and ambition by tying them up in legal contracts.

The father of S Club star Hannah Spearritt has instructed lawyers to find out if the band got a fair share of the multi-million-pound fortune they have made. Experts are combing through a mountain of legal contracts and accounts to establish why the band members have made so little.

Hannah’s father Michael said: “It’s outrageous that these children have been phenomenally successful yet earned so little. It looks like there is only one place this will end – and that is in the courts.” Paul March, of London-based lawyers Clintons, said: “It is extraordinary to have a commercial contract where the management is out-earning the band to this ratio.”

Hannah’s parents have hired lawyers to chase payments and have also employed an independent auditor to examine all six of the complex legal contracts the youngsters signed.

Mr Spearritt said: “Simon Fuller should be ashamed of himself for taking advantage of these youngsters. I am certain that he has not done anything illegal but it just seems so unfair.”

S Club’s movie, Seeing Double, was launched earlier this month. But Fuller didn’t even attend the premiere. A source close to the group said: “That really hurt them. They had worked so hard on the film. It’s as if he has made his money from them and has got his fingers in bigger pies now.”

The group and their worried parents had already held three crunch meetings with Fuller to try to sort out their differences, but Fuller always had an answer for everything. A source told how the relationship between S Club and Fuller reached such a low that he stormed out of one of the meetings in tears.

“When they brought up the subject of money and their single, You, which they didn’t want to release, he put his foot down. He said, ‘What do you know about this bloody business? I could put cardboard cut-outs of you on the stage and it wouldn’t make any difference’.”

The source added: “I thought some of the band were going to walk out there and then. The only reason the band stayed together is that he offered some more money and promised to open doors for them when it came to launching solo careers.”

After being dumped by the Spice Girls six years ago Fuller made sure his new group were on watertight legal contracts. According to Mr Spearritt, he was suspicious from the start about Fuller’s motives. “I was sceptical but I felt he was offering Hannah, who was then only 16, a fantastic opportunity. I remember the first time I met him, I jokingly asked when they were going to be millionaires. He said very seriously, ‘Well, that would be seven million. I would need another million – so they would need to earn £8million. And of course they’d have to crack America’. I was a bit concerned about his attitude but let it lie.”

Hannah’s parents’ concerns grew when they learned of how Hannah and the others were being treated. Hannah’s mum Jenny said: “When they went away to Miami and Los Angeles to film their TV shows, it was very exciting. But he worked them very hard. On top of 18-hour days filming and rehearsing, they then had to go back to their apartments and do their own cooking and washing. I couldn’t believe they didn’t have someone to help them with household tasks like that.”

By the end of the fourth series Hannah and the other band members had made just £35,000 each. They were paid the Equity rate of £6,000 for each series plus a profit-share bonus of £11,000, according to Hannah’s father.

Mr Spearritt said: “Simon told us we would be making more money by the fourth TV series, but we haven’t made any. No one has been able to explain to me why the band earned so little from such a successful TV show. Simon was taking 51 per cent from merchandising deals and each band member got 7 per cent each.”

One of the final straws came when band members were only given 50 free tickets each for their recent 20-date tour. “It sounds like quite a petty thing but it just illustrated that they weren’t seen as the stars of the show but as puppets,” Mr Spearritt said.

Fuller refused to comment.

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Credit: Sunday Mirror

Posted: April 27th, 2003