S Club 7’s Paul Cattermole says Hannah Spearritt dumped him for Hollywood but now that she’s back and doing EastEnders he wants to try again
EASTENDERS newcomer Hannah Spearritt dumped her boyfriend to land a big-name lover who could boost her career, the jilted ex has revealed.
Long-time partner and former S Club 7 bandmate Paul Cattermole claims she was ordered to ditch him for an actor to catch the attention of Hollywood casting directors.
Last week it was announced Hannah, 36, is joining the BBC1 soap and will appear in Albert Square as Kandice Taylor later this year.
After she split from Paul, who first met her when she was 13 and he was 17, she dated higher-profile Primeval co-star Andrew-Lee Potts.
Now Paul, 40, has told how he believes Hannah was instructed by her US agents to upgrade her love-life in a bid to make it big in LA.
But he also wants to give their love another chance.
The singer told The Sun on Sunday of the split: “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.”
Hannah and Paul were part of S Club 7 from the beginning in 1999, and, having been friends since their teens, soon began dating.
But because their management had banned relationships, they only revealed they were a couple in 2001.
Until then, the lovers had to sneak around for secret sex sessions behind the backs of their five bandmates and label bosses.
Often that involved clandestine travel between Hannah’s home in London and Paul’s 25 miles away in St Albans, Herts.
Paul explained: “We had a very passionate relationship and would steal kisses and cuddles in the dressing rooms.
“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.”
Paul admits he was blindsided when Hannah ended their relationship in 2006, three years after S Club 7, famous for tracks Reach and Don’t Stop Movin’, had split up.
The break-up came soon after Hannah flew to the US to try to pursue an acting career.
To his lasting anguish, Paul did not join her for the US trip.
He continued: “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.” Shortly after their split Hannah was pictured cosying up to her hunky new co-star Andrew-Lee Potts, now 38, after signing up for ITV’s sci-fi drama Primeval.
Paul said of love rival Andrew: “We looked quite a bit similar. I remember seeing photos of them both together and people were accidentally calling Andrew me for a while. I was really down in the dumps and having to read those headlines, literally like I’d been replaced. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
I felt like my world had been crushed.
“It came along really suddenly, but the thing is she’s not really like that and it was out of character. I don’t believe she meant to do it.” Paul started drinking heavily as a result of their break-up and believes his career suffered as a result. He said: “I didn’t get the opportunity to do anything for years when I got swapped for a lookalike on Primeval.
“It was very strange for me to work out why everything had happened in the space of one week.
“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.”
After two years together, Hannah and Andrew-Lee got engaged in December 2008 but parted in 2013.
The singer-turned-actress, who has also appeared in US films Agent Cody Banks 2 and Seed Of Chucky, went on to date her personal trainer Adam Thomas, now 37.
They got engaged after a seven-month romance but split up in June 2015.
Hannah then reignited her romance with Paul, seven months after S Club 7 had itself reunited for a Children In Need performance and tour. At the time Adam claimed he had been dumped “out of the blue” and accused Paul of moving into his bed “before it’d got cold”.
Last year, Adam was charged with assaulting Hannah at her home but cleared when witnesses failed to show up for the trial.
Today Paul insists he and Hannah only got back together months after she had broken off her engagement to Adam.
She invited him to move into her West London flat and Paul felt life was perfect again — but only briefly.
He explained: “The first two weeks she treated me amazingly. She was cuddling me all the time.
“But after that her affection depended on how much cooking and vacuuming I’d done. She also wanted someone with job security to provide, and that’s not me.”
But Paul, now a West End star, also felt let down that Hannah had never apologised for their initial split.
He explained: “When I brought it up as a thing that needed to be discussed and put to one side she went, ‘Yes, it was very sudden’.
“It makes me laugh because that’s Hannah’s way of actually admitting to something. Her way of saying sorry is in actions, so she did say sorry by taking me back. We also created a Buddha garden together at her flat after spending £300 on flowers. All I wanted her to do was say sorry and she never did properly. I thought I’d forgiven her but maybe I haven’t.”
Paul decided to end their relationship in November 2015, after three and a half months back together, because he suspected she still had feelings for trainer ex Adam.
But Paul, who is single, admits he hopes that it might be third time lucky for their relationship one day.
He said: “I still care about her and loved that girl like crazy. I remember thinking when we first met that she had the cutest sunflower face and had this energy where if she walked in the room it got brighter.
“If it hadn’t been for Andrew-Lee I think we’d now be three children in.”
