The tabloids abound with rumours of spats in the Hear'Say camp, supposedly sparked by the Popstars winners' gruelling workload. Working till you drop is a fact of teen-band life, but Hear'Say seem to be putting in more hours than most, perhaps securing their financial future against the day "the kids" decide they are flimsy effigies held together with glue and wire. Their first national tour, which was launched on Saturday in Noel Sullivan's home town, Cardiff, takes in 36 gigs in 30 days. No wonder their smiles seemed to be wavering by the end of the first night.
The fact that life in the band seems more grind than glamour has not daunted Cardiff's under-14s, who have gathered in their thousands to marvel at how little in the way of charisma it takes to be a pop star... oh, all right, they've come to swoon. First among equals tonight is Noel, who curries local favour by wrapping himself in a Welsh flag and - hard to believe, I know - belting like Tom Jones.
For all the attention Myleene, Kym, Suzanne and Danny get, they may as well be anonymous backing singers. But all five heave democratically as one, dancing the lumpy dances and singing the two hits, as well as almost 20 other songs that could be the hits with different titles. They even contrive to make nine covers, ranging from Bridge Over Troubled Water to Madonna's Express Yourself, sound uniformly Hear'Sayesque (though that implies they have a "sound", which they haven't, beyond the R&B-derived jigglings of their genre).
The mandatory solo spots are the only inkling there could be five separate personalities in there, biding their time till the inevitable solo careers. I foresee a cult of guilt-ridden working mums flocking around Kym, who accompanies LeAnn Rimes's How Do I Live Without You? with home videos of her kids, while men with certain predilections will adopt leather-clad Myleene, who croons Chains while wrapped in one.
What a dispiriting spectacle. As every assembly-line band in the past 10 years has proved, "working hard" doesn't guarantee sparkle or imagination. The 1m people who bought the single Pure and Simple may disagree, but their laborious encore of that song would have been much enhanced had the shamelessly egocentric Popstars reject Darius - whose audition tape was shown during the show as a joke - been up there with them.
Hear'Say play the International Arena, Cardiff (0870 735 5000) until Wednesday, then tour.
