Including this babe…

It’s great being part of a successful pop group. You get to travel the world, you do your gigs, you pass groupies around, you drink free booze, you take drugs, you grow a beard, you lose your bikini body, the whole world points fingers at you, you decide not to leave the house for a while, you spend your time prowling around Twitter to see if people are slagging you off, you stop eating, you ignore phone calls from your friends, you do things like stand naked in front of a mirror with “slut” scrawled on it in lipstick. Who wouldn’t want that kind of life? With that in mind, below are four total maniacs who decided to LEAVE their pop group, just as things were going brilliantly…

1. Robbie Williams

Damn it Robbie, what were you thinking? Just as Take That were showing their mature side in 1995 – Howard had grown dreads, Jason had the whole beard thing happening – Williams decided to throw a spanner in the works by morphing into a massive dick and ultimately destroying the band. And look what happened. Barlow fell apart, Owen started having affair after affair with frumpy nursing students, Donald went clubbing and couldn’t find the exit, Orange disappeared completely. Granted, it all turned out really well in the end, but some people will always wonder what might have been. They could have been the Rolling Stones.

2. Mutya Buena

In 2005 Mutya Buena – Spanish for “very good” – decided that she was far too cool for the Sugababes, and left. What a mistake that was. Since then, they’ve pulled a trick straight from Doctor Who by regenerating into three completely different girls, and have gone STRATOSPHERIC. While Mutya has covered herself in more and more strange tattoos, most of which look like entire extracts from magazine articles, until eventually she’ll just be a set of peering eyes beneath a layer of green ink. She’s also replaced her front tooth with an unopened Oxo cube.

3. Dane Bowers

Another Level were actually good. They might have looked like a quartet of potential date rapers, but beneath the veneer of hair gel and shiny shirts, these boys could sing! They enjoyed a supersized hit with the shagging anthem “Freak Me” in 2000 before Dane Bowers thought it wise to tread his own weighty path to stardom. After a string of singing disasters, and a humiliating MTV show called Totally Boy Band, Dane’s only remaining saving grace is that he’s considered to be the long straw in a “Bowers or Gaffney?” sex decision.

4. Bryan McFadden

For a while McFadden and Kerry Katona were like a funny mirror version of Posh and Becks. Him a handsome pop star, her the Liverpool re-imagining of Helen of Troy. Then so began the unravelling. Kerry now yo-yos between interviews on drugs, and shows about how she’s TURNING HER LIFE AROUND. McFadden, meanwhile, told Westlife to sod off in 2004 , and while they’ve gone on to become Ireland’s answer to The Beatles, Bryan announced loudly that he was changing his name to Brian. And then vanished.