It took me three or four days to get a call through to my mum. When I finally managed it, I said, ‘Hi Mum, it’s me’ and there was just silence at the other end. It turned out she was so overcome with relief she couldn’t actually speak. She’d been at work in the nursing home when the news had come on the TV. Everyone there knew I was in New York, so they all just stopped and looked at her, and she’d had three days of fearing the worst. So when I got through, she couldn’t speak, and neither could I; we both sat, holding our phones in silence.
LEE
The girls from Atomic Kitten – Natasha Hamilton, Liz McClarnon and Jenny Frost, who had only a few weeks before replaced Kerry Katona – were in the same hotel. They were signed to our label and had also been evacuated from New York. We inevitably spent a lot of time with them; they were all lovely and it was a comfort having them there. That was when Liz and I first got to know each other, and we ended up getting together later. But I had times during that week when I was so scared I would physically crouch down under a table. All four lads slept in the same room the whole time we were there. It felt as though the world had suddenly become completely unpredictable and, by extreme bad luck, we’d chanced upon the wrong place at the wrong time, when anything might still happen.
ANTONY
Finally, a week later, we were able to fly home and, because of our schedule we had to go straight from the airport to a gig in Southampton, an open-air event. The crowd knew we’d be there because we’d announced it on our website, and our families were all travelling down to the coast as well. I’m not by nature a crier, but it was pretty emotional seeing my parents’ faces. And being back on stage. Just going through our normal routines felt freshly amazing. I think we all felt very fortunate.
LEE
When we all settled down again in the UK, Liz and I went out for a while after that, and even got engaged. But looking back now, there was no real prospect of us ever getting married, or that relationship working out, nor should it have. It was a strong connection, and we’re friends to this day, but it wasn’t built on anything like normal circumstances. Instead it was a bond founded on shared fear at an extraordinary time.
SIMON
It’s a strange chapter in all our lives, such a massive thing to be part of, when all we wanted to do was sing and dance, and I’m not sure we’re any more equipped now to analyse it or put it in any kind of context. But the anniversary of those terrible events will always be important around the world, and we’re part of a small group who witnessed them with our own eyes. It will always be a memory of fear, enormous sadness and heaviness. There’s no getting away from it. We just carry it with us and, compared with so many others on that day, always feel very fortunate.
Made to Feel Very, Very Bad
October 2001
ANTONY
Looking back now, it was clear we’d all been through something significant in our young lives, and no doubt should have taken a bit of time away to take stock, just hang out with our families and friends, and get some perspective. Instead, we plunged straight into fresh rounds of interviews, photo shoots and promo duties for the single ‘If You Come Back’ – remember that? – which was due out on 12 November, with our first album to follow a fortnight later. We were at a crucial moment in our career, this was the tipping point as to whether we’d make good on all of our management and record company’s investment in us, and there was no question of taking our foot off the pedal and giving it less than our all. But we were all extremely tired, even before New York, and absolutely strung out afterwards. We should have known something was going to give.
On 25 October, we made our last trip of the day to the offices of The Sun newspaper, to participate in a billed Q&A web chat with fans. Already that week we’d spoken to one magazine after another. Back in the pre-Twitter days, there was no social media to bounce interviews around or keep in touch with the fans directly. We had to sit down with Top of the Pops magazine, Smash Hits, TV Hits and a hundred others, give each of them our all, and hope the reporters liked us enough to give us a fair go when it came to putting our stuff on the page.
It was usually a lot of fun, even if it was the same questions being thrown at us over and over again. Have you got a girlfriend? When’s the album out? When are you going to split up? When are you going to get back together? What’s the silliest thing Lee’s ever done?
DUNCAN
But now they had something else to ask us about …
SIMON
How was 9/11?
ANTONY
What was it like being in New York on 9/11?
DUNCAN
How did you feel watching the Twin Towers fall on 9/11?
ANTONY
How do you feel about what happened on 9/11?
SIMON
The thing to know is that sometimes Lee just zones out. I’ve always noticed it – he goes into another world, and it used to happen a lot more than it does now. He tunes in and out, without concentrating. Usually, it doesn’t matter because we all chip in with our bits, they kind of make sense, and then he comes in with something funny if he wants to.
DUNCAN
On that day, we walked into The Sun’s office in Canary Wharf. We weren’t particularly well known, but a couple of people stopped us for autographs on the way in, and everyone was incredibly friendly. We went into a small room, no cameras, just a few people – a young male journalist reading questions from the fans’ web chat, and The Sun’s showbiz columnist, Dominic Mohan, sitting to one side. And off we went. Nearly home time …
After a couple of standard questions, the lad read out one from fans, and it was ‘What was 9/11 like?’ and I heard Lee sigh. But I thought, ‘Here we go, we got asked the question, we know what to say here.’
ANTONY
So I started by saying, ‘We saw the second plane crash into the Tower and then the building crumble.’ And the lad, bless him, answered, ‘You witnessed all that? It must have been scary.’
SIMON
At which point, I said, ‘Of course it was scary, it would be. It’s the biggest day of terrorism in history.’
ANTONY
And then, from nowhere, our dreamy fourth wheel, Lee Ryan, piped up, ‘What about whales?’ Everyone, including us, looked at him confused, wondering what was coming next. It was like he was having a completely different conversation from the rest of us. But then he said, ‘What about all the wars we don’t hear about? The animals that need saving? This New York thing is being blown out of proportion.’
SIMON
I said, ‘Shut up, Lee.’
ANTONY
Lee said, ‘Who gives a fuck about New York when elephants are being killed?’
DUNCAN
I said, ‘Lee, shut up.’
ANTONY
And out of the corner of my eye I saw Dominic Mohan – who’d been sitting to one side, keeping half an eye on his young lad, but basically tapping into his phone – perk up. His journalist’s radar had pinged in his ear, and he stopped the Q&A