Kym Marsh joins former Hear’Say bandmate Suzanne Shaw in going teetotal

Kym Marsh has joined her former Hear’Say bandmate in going alcohol free for the next month as the pair reminisced about their time in the pop group on an Instagram Live on Tuesday.

Having been alcohol free for 11 months, Suzanne, 39, said booze ‘knocked’ her confidence while Kym, 44, added that she doesn’t miss having a hangover.

Suzanne, who is an ambassador for OYNB (One Year No Beer), said: ‘Last year, I was fine. If I was in a contract, I wouldn’t drink. 

‘One thing drinking did was knock my confidence. When I wasn’t in a contract, it was, “oh lets have a few. Is it wine o’clock yet?” Before you know it you’re on the floor eating a kebab. Do you think you’ll carry on longer?’

Kym, who is presenting new BBC show Morning Live with Gethin Jones, said she hasn’t found quitting alcohol too difficult yet.

She said: ‘I’m doing this show until the middle of December. I have to be up so early in the morning as well so it’s not going to be difficult, not having a drink, so that’s good. 

‘I actually like the way it’s made me feel. I don’t miss the hangovers at all because as I’ve got older, they last longer and it’s hideous.’  

Suzanne agreed, saying: ‘It’s awful! Like nearly a week sometimes,’ to which Kym said: ‘It’s a depressant, is it not? When it’s gone, it gives you such a low and just makes you feel a million times worse. 

‘I know sometimes people use it when they’re stressed out or had a bad day, I’ve done that myself. The problem is always there the next day and you feel worse. I’ve found I sleep better. I have poor sleep anyway.’

Suzanne has been open about her struggles with mental health and previously admitting to using alcohol to numb her feelings.

The singer said mental health had been her biggest ‘day to day’ challenge and that she’d struggled with the illness for 18 years, since around the time Hear’Say made it big in the UK charts. 

During the chat, Suzanne and Kym reminisced about their time in Hear’Say and being put together on reality series Popstars. 

Kym likened being on the show, one of the first of its kind, to being ‘put under a microscope’.  

She said: ‘I still think even now, the way that show was, I still don’t think people get. Anyone now on X Factor, it’s such a different model. 

‘Our journey was inevitably different to theirs. It was a bit experimental, it was under a microscope. That’s what makes our experience different.’

Suzanne said: ‘You, me and Jess (Liberty X’s Jessica Taylor) were always together in the audition rounds. I also remember when loads of them got really drunk. 

‘Who was it? There was a group who all came in really like, “what did we do last night?” And they’d filmed the whole thing with them.’

Kim replied: ‘We didn’t get away with anything on that show did we? It was so much more fly on the wall. You couldn’t make a mistake because if you did, you paid for it.’

Suzanne also read out the letter she got confirming she had won a place on Popstars, which was 20 years to the date she and Kym were speaking. 

The pair then laughed over their Hear’Say dolls, with Suzanne joking she thought hers looked more like Hannah Spearritt or Jo O’Meara from S Club. 

Meanwhile, Kym also spoke about her relationship with her soldier boyfriend Scott Radcliffe. 

Asking about the romance, Suzanne said: ‘It must be great having a fella in the army?’

Kym replied: ‘People say it is hard, it is but it’s one of the things that keeps it fresh because we are not in each other’s pockets all the time. We miss each other.’ 

Kym, who has children David, 25, Emily, 23, and Polly, nine, spoke about being a grandmother to Emily’s son Teddy who was born in May 2019.

She said: ‘He is the cutest thing. Everyone said to me, wait till you have your first grandchild, there’s no feeling like it. I absolutely adore him. I FaceTime everyday, I want to see him everyday. 

‘The best part is, I can hand him back,’ she added, laughing.  

It comes after Suzanne recently admitted she struggles to listen to current pop groups like Little Mix because of what she went through in the music industry.

Appearing on Scotty McGlynn’s Celebrity Skin Talk, the star compared being in Hear’Say to starring in a ‘soap opera’.  

She said: ‘I don’t think we were about our music at all. I think we were a soap opera. You had the five of us in the band and then all our families. 

‘It was about the people who were in our lives too. It massively effected, not just us in the band, but everyone around us.’

‘I still struggle to listen to the charts because of my experience in the music industry. I talked about in therapy. It’s tough for me to appreciate the likes of Little Mix. 

‘I like their music but I wouldn’t go out of my way to listen to it because it scarred me for so much for so long. We were told we were going to be popstars and were used, chewed up, spat out and there was no one there to pick up the pieces.’