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When Natasha Hamilton joined Atomic Kitten as a teenager in 1999, she believed she'd bagged the best gig ever. However, the reality of gruelling tours, strained friendships and weight concerns was far from her dream. Now, the original Atomic Kitten star is participating in a new BBC documentary, Girlbands Forever, to share how her time singing Whole Again left her mentally and physically shattered. "I'm hoping with this documentary that people will realise it was all smoke and mirrors," says mum-of-five Natasha . The Liverpudlian singer was just 16 when she auditioned for manager Martin O'Shea and 80s pop star Andy McCluskey, who were on the hunt for a vocalist to join Kerry Katona and Liz McClarnon in their girlband. "It was difficult even at the beginning," admits Natasha. "Liz and Kerry had been together a good 18 months and they were thick as thieves. On the second audition day they put me with the girls so I went to their flat to learn some dance moves and just being an excitable 16 year old, when Kerry was teaching me the moves, I was like, 'Oh, what about if we did this?'" "Kerry didn't like that. She went back to Andy and Martin and said, 'I don't like her. If she's in the band, I'm leaving.' I remember crying my eyes out because I just knew this was the opportunity that I'd been waiting for because it was backed by Andy and he had proper studios and there was money behind it." To Natasha's surprise, Andy and Martin were so impressed with her vocals they stood by her. "They actually backed me," says Natasha. "They said, 'Well, she is in the band, Kerry, so if you wanna leave, leave.' They just called her bluff." Despite their initial disagreements, Natasha and Kerry soon became close friends , with Kerry even moving into Natasha's family home. "We ended up slowly getting a bit more pally," says Natasha, 43. "I was like the little sister that she tried to look after. We went on holidays together you know so we kind of went from that initial butting heads to being the best of friends." However, before Atomic Kitten's biggest hit Whole Again reached No1, Kerry left the band and was replaced by Jenny Frost. This left Natasha feeling like she had the weight of the band on her shoulders. "I can specifically remember going home one time after being on tour and both of the girls had been poorly, but the show kept on," recalls Natasha. "When the [other] girls were sick, we still did all our gigs because I would cover their vocal parts. Whenever I was sick the show would have to be pulled." "So I had this mega load of pressure for me to always perform. I can remember being sat on the living room floor and crying. And my mum and dad going, 'What's wrong?' I just explained, 'I'm struggling. ' So my mum phoned Martin and had some very strong words, as a Scouse mum would." "She was saying, 'You need to look after my daughter more. She's just as important as everyone else, stop putting all the pressure on her shoulders.'" With a demanding schedule and constant performances, Natasha's weight dramatically dropped, leading to rumours of an eating disorder. However, she insists that her weight loss was due to her hectic schedule, not an eating disorder. She does admit, though, that the band would take fat-burning supplements, which at the time contained substances that are now banned. "If we were doing a video shoot there'd be certain fat-burning supplements that we would take to try and get like a six-pack," Natasha shares. "No one forced us to do that, but obviously body image was very skewed back then. And it was the time they used to call it the Lollipop Head and the Size Zero. Not that I ever wanted to be a size zero but we did do fat-burning things like that. We got six-packs in three days. I would never do that now." At the age of 19, Natasha became pregnant with her first child, Josh, and initially kept the pregnancy to herself. However, after falling asleep in the recording studio and fainting in a shop, she had to reveal her secret. Bandmates Jenny and Liz were thrilled for her. "They said, 'Are you happy?' And I said, 'Yeah,' and they gave me the biggest hug," Natasha remembers. Natasha continued working throughout her pregnancy and was given six weeks off to recover after Josh was born via C-section. With no time to attend an antenatal class before the birth, Natasha was unprepared for what motherhood would entail or how much recovery she would need. "I am basically a child having a child," she reflects on the situation. "I don't know anything about pre- and post-pregnancy. I was on tour the whole of my pregnancy. So when I'm told, 'OK, you can have six weeks off and then come back and do a show,' I'm just like, 'OK.'" However, returning to the stage so soon after giving birth proved challenging for Natasha. Fearing she would lose everything she'd worked for, she embarked on a massive tour. Nine months later, she was diagnosed with postnatal depression. "The reality of it is I am going on this downward spiral of postnatal depression," reveals Natasha. "I'm in pain, I'm not ready on my first day back at work to be Natasha from Atomic Kitten. It was the most horrifying performance of my life, being on stage where I thought, 'Oh my God this is horrendous.' I didn't want to be there. It was like everything was in slow-mo. I could feel everyone looking at me." "I started getting really insecure and thinking, 'Do I look fat? Am I sweating too much?' I'm too out of breath, my ankles hurt, my knees hurt, my hips hurt, my boobs hurt, everything hurts. But I never told anyone. I couldn't say a word to anyone because I was just frightened." By the time Josh was 18 months old, Natasha realised she couldn't stay in the band any longer. "My mental health deteriorated and I just couldn't cope," she admits. "I had crippling anxiety. In the end it just felt like a messy pile of rubbish, and there was no celebration. I ended up going back home and thinking I don't know how to function in the real world." Girlbands Forever is on BBC2 on Saturday 1 November at 9.20pm.
