More Than You Know. Matt Goss

limos, that went with the territory, but this was something else. You quickly learn to take certain precautions when you know fans will be somewhere on any given day. We would remove our jewellery or loose clothing, tuck everything away, otherwise it would just be shredded off us – after all, if these fans could rip a door off a car . . . so there was often a real sense of personal danger. Of course, I loved it, although I always found it frightening leaving a venue, not for myself but because I felt a genuine fear that kids might be knocked over by the car or the crowds.

      Many times you’d feel a searing pain on your head just as you heard a girl screaming, ‘I’ve got it! I’ve got it! I’ve got his hair!’ and you’d be thinking, Yes, and half my bloody scalp as well! It was funny, Brosettes were like a bloody army, they were proper hardcore, a force to be reckoned with! When you had three or four thousand of them turn up . . . you were in trouble!

      Did I find it oppressive or claustrophobic? Not one bit. What’s not to love about doing a job that is so different to what is considered ‘normal’? What’s not to love about your life being absolutely barmy?

      Inevitably, a few fans crossed the line into rather more unsettling areas. We had our share of death threats. Plenty in fact – that’s not some perverse pop star bragging, just an observation that this sort of behaviour goes with the job. We had a few letters from jealous boyfriends and over-obsessive fans, every band I know gets that, but it can still be a bit freaky. However, one series of letters was particularly chilling. I received four death threats in four separate letters, each mailed from the four most extreme points of the compass in the UK. These letters told me how the writer was going to kill me and when they were going to do it. We’d had threats before but there was something about the way these letters had been written – and the elusive nature of the premeditated mailing from four distant postcodes – that made it all seem a little too thorough. I said to my dad, ‘Look, I wouldn’t normally bother you with this but . . .’ so he had a look at what had been going on. He became concerned when it transpired there were no fingerprints on any of the four letters – nothing.

      There was an interval of about two months from the letters being sent to when they said I would be killed. It turned out that on this particular day we were due to fly out of Heathrow, not an ideal location in which to keep a low profile. We arrived at the airport encircled by ten bobbies, with a further inner cordon made up of ten of our own security. I knew it was serious when they insisted I wear a bullet-proof vest. That was a very uneasy experience. Until you put a bullet-proof vest on in genuine fearful circumstances, you don’t think of such things, but I can tell you that your arms immediately start to feel big and your head seems enormous (and your balls feel massive!). Everything is exaggerated, you are like some cumbersome, over-sized target. Then your mind starts to interfere, making you think, What about my throat? What about my eyes? But the considered approach is that you protect the ‘vital organs’ and hope they don’t put a bullet in the brain.