STEPS star Faye Tozer, 46, on how the band’s split shattered her self-worth, and finding her identity again as a mum.
No one believes me when I tell them I was a really shy and geeky kid.
From as early as I can remember, bullies loved to tease me and, as a result, I was quiet in school.
At six, my mum Dorothy, now 76, signed me and my sister Clare, 47, up to a stage school in Northampton and I instantly took to it.
Singing and dancing for an audience gave me such a rush.
Even though performing did wonders for my confidence, it only made the bullying worse. In a secondary-school English lesson, our teacher asked us to write down the 10 things we liked most about ourselves.
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They then popped out for a few minutes and a girl who had been tormenting me grabbed my notebook, stood up on a chair and started reading out what I’d written.
She made up lots of horrible things about how I thought I was better than everyone else because I’d be in the local paper with my theatre group.
It was absolutely devastating, but I wasn’t going to let anyone stand in the way of my passion.
I was 20 and working as a lounge girl at the Hilton on Park Lane when I saw the ad for Steps in a newspaper.
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It read: “Looking for 18-22-year-old boys and girls – they have to be good-looking and able to sing and dance.”
After sending the producers a cassette tape of my singing, I was invited to audition with 600 others a month later.
They put us through several rounds of dance and singing challenges, before narrowing us down to five.
Our first single 5,6,7,8 spent 17 weeks in the charts in 1997, but I found the fame that came with the success really overwhelming.
I couldn’t just go to bars with my friends any more without men grabbing me by the arm and expecting me to talk to them.
Deep down, I was always insecure that I’d only been picked to be in the band to tick some kind of pretty Barbie-girl box.
I felt like public property. I didn’t leave the house on my own because I got so nervous whenever people yelled at me in the street, even if it was in a friendly way.
As my band mates Claire [Richards], Lisa [Scott-Lee] and I had to wear so many crop tops, I got in the habit of skipping meals ahead of any TV performance.
I thought looking good meant being skinny.
Deep down, I was always insecure that I’d only been picked to be in the band to tick some kind of pretty Barbie-girl box.
That’s why in 1999 I decided to change up my hair.
I went to a salon with a photo from a magazine of a woman with cute twists in her hair.
When Steps split in 2001, I lost all sense of myself.
But the stylist took that to mean I wanted dreadlocks.
I went to Billie Piper’s 16th birthday party that night and my manager took one look and said: “What have you done?”
But in an unexpected way, it did boost my confidence, because I had to own it.
When Steps split in 2001, I lost all sense of myself.
To not have a schedule saying what time you’d get up and what you’d be wearing left a huge void.
In 2004, I auditioned for a production of Tell Me On A Sunday, which marked a new chapter in my life.
For five years, I toured with musical theatre shows and, for the first time, I felt like Faye Tozer – not Faye from Steps.
While doing panto in Newcastle, I met my husband Michael [Smith, 40, an IT sales businessman] in a night club and we had our son Benjamin in 2009.
Motherhood is the best thing that happened to me.
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It stopped me worrying what people thought of me, because I was looking after somebody else.
I’d worked so hard on my new life, I was reluctant to revisit Steps.
I didn’t want to be one-fifth of something – I wanted to be a whole entity.
But in 2011, we did a reunion show, which turned into a therapy session.
Being in Steps now couldn’t be more different from how it was in the ’90s.
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We’re stronger for the time apart, plus I don’t compare myself to the others any more.
We have different qualities – if we were all the same, what would be the point?
Steps’ 25th-anniversary Platinum Collection is available now at Store.stepsofficial.co.uk.
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