AFTER singing on East Lancashire's working men's club circuit, future chart topper Kevin Simm got his big break on ITV's first series of Popstars, the reality TV show which searched the nation for singing talent.

But after being picked in the final ten contestants, he lost out to the five hopefuls who became short-lived pop group Hear'Say.

Reporter Ben Hewes hears how becoming a 'Flopstar' was the best thing to ever happen to Kevin.

LIBERTY X were formed over a glass of wine at singer Kelli Young's house.

The five had entered Popstars with dreams of becoming the next big thing, and ended up with nothing.

Hear'Say, including Wigan's Kym Marsh, had been chosen to receive a recording contract, and the five other hopefuls, Kevin, Jessica Taylor from Penwortham, near Preston, Tony Lundon, from Galway in Ireland, Michelle Heaton, from Newcastle, and Kelli Young, from Derby, were back where they started.

But to Kevin, who was brought up in Leyland and Abbey Village, near Blackburn, the best thing about Popstars was getting out of the show with his pride intact.

He said: "We met up after everything happened and had a few glasses of wine. That night we talked about it. It was a really good twist of fate, meeting four other people who could sing well.

"We're lucky. We managed to get out of the programme with credibility."

Up until Popstars, Kevin had been singing in Blackpool as part of Force Five, a boy band singing cover songs. He also met his fiancee Kelly, 23, a dancer at the resort.

He said: "At the time I had finished with an agent. I had a job in Blackpool in a put-together boy band and I did that for six months which was a good experience. I was singing 36 songs a night, so it gave me a lot of live experience.

"By the end of that the Popstars auditions were on, so all of us in the band went down to London. We got through the first auditions and then went down to Birmingham.

"I was the only one who got through out of the band. I don't know how, we had to do a dance audition and I can't dance! From then on I was on my own."

But even after the show had finished, and the five future Liberty X members formed their own group, there was one more stumbling block to their careers.

Kevin and the other singers were still contracted to LWT, the programme makers behind Popstars, and couldn't launch their career for six months after the show ended.

During this time they were offered contracts and offers of work as solo artists, but turned them all down to stay together as a band.

Kevin, who prides himself on liking a variety of music including Welsh rockers Stereophonics and American hip-hop/rock act N.E.R.D, said: "There was no way we were going to sign. They tried to get us to sign with other people, but they would have took a huge percentage of our earnings probably for the rest of our careers. We knew we didn't want to sign, with the songs they were playing us, and knew we wanted to write our own music.

"Popstars got us seen and we did meet each other, but it didn't help us get a record deal or anything like that.

"We had no one looking after us and it came to having a lot of luck, and being very stubborn. That is how we ended up on the right track I think.

"It was a bit risky but it worked out. We were lucky, it could have ended and we might not have got a deal."

After finding manager Garry Wilson, who managed mid-'90s group Worlds Apart, and more recently boy band Phixx, the band began writing.

"We wrote about six songs and went around record companies and found V2 Music, quite an indie based label who have the Stereophonics and people like that.

"We knew if we went for them we weren't going to be pushed into doing stupid songs. They really liked what we put to them."

Two of the songs put to V2 were No Clouds and Thinking It Over - the later was to eventually enter the charts at number five.

During the band's writing sessions the five often split up into smaller groups to concentrate. Kevin often works with Tony and hopes to get into the production side of music one day.

V2 music, based in Holland Park, London, is owned by Sir Richard Branson, and the five were signed in 2001 for a reported £1.6million for a six album deal.

Kevin remembers meeting Richard Branson after the band signed on the dotted line. He said: "We were in a bar in V2. He was just sat on the floor with me and we were drinking.

"It's mad to think such a hugely successful and famous man was just sat on the V2 bar floor drinking. He is really fun. You're put on this earth to enjoy yourself and he definitely does that."