Marsh, who grew up in Wigan, Greater Manchester, always wanted to be a performer. Her father was in a band that used to support the Beatles and, as a child, would regale her with stories of having dinner with the Fab Four and being chased by the Rolling Stones. “He loved Ringo and George,” she says. “He didn’t think much of the other two.”
She already had a strong voice by the age of 10 when she began singing in Labour clubs in Liverpool, much to the delight of her father, who became her roadie, “hoiking all my equipment from club to club”. At the age of 13, she won a record contract with a company in Manchester and released a single, One Kiss. “Somewhere on the internet, there is footage of me singing on This Morning and being interviewed by Fred the weatherman.”
She never abandoned her dream of a singing career, even in her 20s, by which point she had two children, separating from their father when the eldest, Emilie, was two. “I didn’t have a lot of money at that time, I lived hand to mouth for a while,” she says. “I remember painting the kids’ bedrooms using free tester pots from Homebase.”
‘Nigel Lythgoe told me I needed to lose weight’
When Marsh won a place in Hear’Say – who were formed on the reality show Popstars and broke chart records with their debut single, Pure and Simple, and album – no one was more delighted than her father. But before long, she and her fellow band members, who included the musician and TV presenter Myleene Klass, were working 18-hour days and having every aspect of their lives – and bodies – scrutinised by a rabid media culture (sample stories: “Myleene: Why I long for smaller boobs”, “Hear’say Danny’s threat to quit”, the papers “outing” Marsh for her children, who she had kept “secret”).
“We were guinea pigs and we were fed to the lions,” says Marsh. “I think we all feel now that there should have been some duty of care. We talk a lot about the things that happen to people on shows such as Love Island, but back then there was nothing.”
