benadams-music.co.uk

Back in the 90's Ben Adams lead one of the UK's most popular boybands, A1.

In 2009, he reappeared on the celebrity scene, after taking part in Celebrity Big Brother.

Ben told catch247.com what's next.

You’ve been doing some A1 gigs haven’t you?

No we haven’t, we’re going to be doing at the end of the year now instead. We’re going to put together some new tracks, and do some gigs in Scandinavia first and then take it to Europe and Asia.

Will it be a full on reunion then?

Yeah well first we’re going to do gigs and we’ll see what material we come up with. There’s no point doing it unless it’s going to be amazing. We haven’t started writing yet, we’ll start in a couple of months.

We haven’t spoken to paul for some time, so we’ll have to do that first and go from there. Towards the end of a1 it was just the three of us anyway me mark and Christian anyway so we’ll have to play it by ear.

Most recently, you’ve been known for Big Brother. Why did you do it?

I’d set up studios and had been producing and writing for other artists and was doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff, I felt being stuck in one room wasn’t something I wanted to do at this point in my life, I can do that further down the line. I’d always turned down other shows but I thought why not, it’s a different thing to do for January!

Much was written in the papers about your sex life. Was that people cashing in, or your PR people going in to overdrive?

My people had nothing to do with any of that, you get people trying to jump on the bandwagon and claim they did this and that, so it’s the way the media is right now, anything to be had to do with sex and scandal is going to be brought up.

When A1 were big, there were loads of young groups around. Did you have any Inter band relations?

No, we kept ourselves to ourselves. We had the road shows and stuff and some stuff went on the road, but we had long term girlfriends so we didn’t play away.

What about these stories about you and Alexandra Burke? Apparently you said you dated her and she said you didn’t?

The hardest thing is, we’ve only ever been friends I didn’t say anything. I’ve known her for years, that was what I was most pissed off about, they said I’d said I’d never found her attractive anyway, and id never say that either. Someone wrote it and it got around everywhere and was developed and ive never said anything of the sort.

I was working with her way before X Factor, a couple of years before, we did a couple of tracks together and became friends.

If she was already working in music isn’t it unfair she went on X Factor?

No, absolutely not. You can only develop and become amazing by experience, so the fact she’s been into studios and doing her own stuff, she has an amazing voice. The fact she went on and won it, and now has the praise she deserves is fantastic.

Isn’t it unfair X Factor didn’t mention that, though?

It’s never the case, you don’t get a voice like Leona or Alex if you’ve never sang before. It takes years of singing since a child, developing your voice.

Speaking of studios, what’s the studio crash course you run?

I’ve been getting a lot of people, doing stuff for record companies and I remember how hard it was when it was trying to get into the industry and had no idea, and I didn’t have anyone who could teach me how to write a song or come away with a demo, so I opened my studio up to people who perhaps aren’t signed, so they could do it, to try and give them a leg up. And a starting point.

Would you suggest X factor for any of these people?

If they were good enough. If you’re going up against people like Alex and Leona you have to be amazing. I’ve said to some go and give it ago, but if you don’t come first or second you’re branded an x factor loser and then it’s very hard to do anything after. So you should only do it if you have a good chance of winning,

What is this other music project of yours, called What Jane did next?

Been working on that for a while with Steve Smart and Nick Wolfson, just for fun at first, my voice sounds totally different, like a cockney rap, but people like it so, we’ll see what comes up with that.

It says ‘coming soon’ on the site, when is it coming?

No idea! I’ve got so much on at the moment , I’ve put together a girl band called Pocket Rockstars, I’ve also started a new dance project, and writing so I’ve got so much on my plate. You have to do so much, I cant really do that right now.

Finally, going back to A1 when exactly are things going to happen?

We’re going to start writing again in July I reckon, but we haven’t got gigs on until December.

How big?

Laughs, I don’t think it will be stadiums! Depends how its done. Gig wise were already booked up for massive venues in scandanavia, so it depends how good the material is. We had 11 hits, 2 number 1s, so we have a back catalogue, I think it will be fantastic.