Paul Cattermole has blamed his split from Hannah Spearritt on her growing fame.
The S Club 7 band members sparked a relationship in 2001, but after five years the former couple called time on their romance, which Paul believes was an order his ex-girlfriend received from her management team.
Speaking openly about the breakdown of his love life with the blonde-haired beauty, the 40-year-old singer said: ”I very much felt she thought she needed to prioritise her career.
”I’m betting she was told, ‘So your current boyfriend is doing music stuff. Well, that’s great, but you really need an actor boyfriend’.
”She was much more impressionable then than she is now so I reckon if an agent told her to ditch me then she might have listened.”
The ‘Never Had A Dream Come True’ hitmakers were formed in 1998, but romances among band members were reportedly forbidden.
However, Paul and Hannah found a way to get intimate and would ”steal kisses and cuddles” in the privacy of their dressing rooms.
Paul recalled: ”We had a very passionate relationship and would steal kisses and cuddles in the dressing rooms.”
And Paul would even be chauffeured back to his home in Hertfordshire’s St. Albans before he travelled back into London secretly to spend the night with Hannah because they didn’t want anyone knowing.
He explained: ”We each had a chauffeur-driven limousine and to keep the relationship secret I would let mine take me home to St Albans before I drove myself to London to stay at hers.
”I’d have to wake up around 5am so I could get back to St Albans to be picked up from my house so no one would clock. I would do that pretty much every night.”
And Paul regrets not travelling to America with Hannah when she wanted to pursue her dream of being an actress after S Club 7 disbanded.
He said: ”I regretted so much that I wasn’t able to go with her because things changed.
”We’d been together for several years and you naturally think at that point, ‘Is this the same person?’
”She must have had the thought around the same time as different job chances came in and she just went off me. Agents can be very persuasive.”
But what hurt Paul the most was when Hannah started dating her ‘Primeval’ co-star Andrew-Lee Pott , because he felt he had been ”replaced” by a lookalike.
He continued: ”I’d gone from thinking that we were going to be together forever to being replaced by someone who looked like me.
”It took me years to get over it and made me go to a really bad place. I think she made a decision purely based on her career. I remember standing in the living room strongly telling her that she was making a mistake. I said quite clearly, ‘I think you love me more than you realise and you’ll end up regretting it’. But she didn’t listen.
”I thought I’d forgiven her but maybe I haven’t.”
Paul believes if Hannah had never dated Andrew-Lee, the pair would be settled down and have a family together by now.
He told The Sun Online: ”If it hadn’t been for Andrew-Lee I think we’d now be three children in.”
