‘Fame soon became a nightmare’: Preston on Big Brother falling off balcony — and reforming the Ordinary Boys | Pop and rock

‘I “I hated fame,” says Samuel Preston. “I hated it, hated it, hated it.” Twenty years ago, Preston, who styled himself by his surname in imitation of Morrissey, was suffering from a very severe kind of notoriety. He was best known in the NME with Worthing band The Ordinary Boys, whose socially conscious, ska-influenced indie-punk band had a strong cult following known as the Ordinary Army, thanks to hits such as Boys Will Be Boys. But it was his stint on the 2006 edition of Celebrity Big Brother, and national interest in his relationship with fellow contestant Chantelle Houghton – a fake ‘celebrity’ sent to con B-list stars – that pushed his profile to the highest levels.

After leaving the show, he said: “I was taking loads of Prozac. I was in a weird place.” Now, after years of living on and off in the US, having become a successful songwriter (for the likes of Kylie Minogue, Cher, Olly Murs, Liam Payne and Jessie Ware), and surviving a near-death experience and OxyContin addiction, Preston is back with the Ordinary Boys. The band’s new single Peer Pressure is their first music since 2015 (not counting the Christmas single with Olly Murs).

Preston, 44, was irritable, wearing a Martin Parr-branded T-shirt and with his hair cut short and bleached, sitting upstairs at the Strongroom hotel in east London. Two days ago, the Ordinary Boys played their first concert in a decade here. Although he’s nostalgic for the UK indie scene of the mid-2000s (“literally the only time there wasn’t redemption music except about three bands”), he says that after re-listening to the Ordinary Boys’ 2004 debut Above Counterculture and 2005 follow-up Brassbound, he notices that they have something to say. “Every song [on the debut] Kahn: Don’t get a job, capitalism is bad. We were a political band in our way.” He hadn’t really recorded it at the time. “Billy Bragg called me and said, ‘I think you’re doing something really important.'” He smiles. “But a couple of months later, I went to Big Brother.”

When the offer came, he said yes immediately. “I’m very experimental,” he says. “I’ll do anything twice.” His bandmates were not happy, but he justified it to them – and himself – as “a kind of satirical Warholian piece of art”. That edition of CBB had a memorable cast: Pete Burns (“the coolest guy ever”), George Galloway (“evil energy”), and Michael Barrymore (“nice guy, he made the best frog in the hole ever”). Jimmy Savile made a brief guest appearance. “Terrible. Evil radiates from him.”

But it was Preston and Houghton’s flirtations that captured the nation’s attention — especially since everyone knew Preston had a girlfriend, Camille Aznar, watching him at home. It put him at the center of the tabloid whirlwind. “It quickly became a nightmare,” he says.

One of the first things he did after Big Brother was write a story and photo shoot for the Sunday Mirror. “They forced me to take off my clothes. I didn’t want to. It was very uncomfortable.” He appeared on the front page shirtless, between photographs of Houghton and Aznar, and was shown to be torn between two women. His mother has a copy of the first page framed on the wall of her downstairs toilet. “I don’t think she fully realizes how exciting it is every time I pee.”

He married Houghton in August 2006, eight months after meeting her. “Of course we fell in love. We bonded through this intense experience.” They were the celebrity couple of the moment, and for all his protests today, Preston seemed to relish the exposure: the TV appearances, the glossy magazine covers, the movie premieres. He and Houghton sold their wedding photos to OK! Magazine for £300,000 each. “I stand by that,” he says. “All these footballers are going to do it, why shouldn’t I?”

Preston claimed – and still claims – that 2006’s third album How to Get Everything You Want in Ten Easy Steps, hastily written with the help of “great friend” Will Self to capitalize on his newfound fame, was a commentary on celebrity insiders. I said: I’m going to make an album about this crazy world. But I climbed the walls to find them sharp, hard, and strange. I think that’s why this album sounds so weird. That’s what Lonely at the Top is all about. Suddenly there are a million people around you and you don’t even know if they like you or not.

But instead of being a self-deprecating participant in some Warholian experiment, I tell him that he actually seems distinctly fame-hungry. “I think that’s very fair, but I don’t know if these things cancel themselves out,” he says. “Because there’s a thirst for fame and there’s a curiosity. It wasn’t like, ‘I can’t wait to be famous.’ “I’m going to get a really expensive car.” He seemed to think that being accepted into the club was a definite achievement in itself. “I was a nerd in school. A spiky-haired guy with a whole background. No one ever liked me. So when I got out of Big Brother, it was like, ‘I’m in, I’m in!’

However, “then I found that this world was completely unchangeable. It seemed that the only way to survive was to contort myself into a shape that fit within the confines of what they wanted. I gave up control.”

He was constantly followed by photographers, and people would pass by his boxes. “It was the era of Nuts and Zoo Weekly. The way people were talked about – ‘Preston looks fat today’ – was absolutely terrible.” Moreover, his phone was hacked. In 2018, Preston was one of 16 celebrities who settled phone hacking claims with News Group Newspapers, receiving significant damages. “Phone hacking was a big part of this whole ordeal,” he says. “Going somewhere to find the paparazzi who were already waiting for them made me really doubt everyone. ‘Who the hell told you we’d be here?’

In January 2007, he infamously appeared on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, walking out mid-show after host Simon Amstell satirically read passages from Houghton’s memoir, Living the Dream. Houghton was in the audience. “It’s a proud moment,” Preston says. “It was actually really cruel and classist. I don’t really know what other option I had.” But by the end of the year, his marriage had collapsed, and in early 2008, the Ordinary Boys had broken up, and the initial post-Big Brother career boom — with Brassbound earning gold and three Top 10 singles — declined sharply. “We hated each other at that point,” he says of his bandmates.

He bought a one-way ticket to Philadelphia, his mother’s hometown, and attempted to launch a solo career with Siouxsie and the Banshees’ single, Dressed to Kill. After it failed to chart, he retreated to songwriting for hire: Cher later covered Dressed to Kill, and a song from his canceled solo album, Heart Skips a Beat, became Mers’ biggest hit.

In 2015, the Ordinary Boys returned with an almost entirely ignored pop punk album – “a great record, but we just didn’t get to grips with it” – and two years later, Preston nearly died the night before a songwriting camp in Denmark. Drunk on free champagne, he took a sleeping pill and fell from a second-floor balcony. He was airlifted to hospital and told he would never walk again.

“I remember just thinking: ‘Come on, don’t be an idiot,'” he says. He has been using a wheelchair for six months and has multiple metal plates in his body: He stands and pulls down one side of his pants to reveal a huge scar running the length of his leg. He says he is now in better shape than ever, but after his recovery he became addicted to OxyContin. He smiles ruefully: “I got four different doctors to prescribe the recommended amount for me.” “I’m an idiot for doing that.” After a year of “dread and terror,” he became cold. “I spent a weekend where I threw up and shook in bed. It was terrible.”

He wrote a song about his accident called “Live Forever.” He gave it to his good friend and collaborator Payne: The One Direction singer released his version in 2019. “And then he falls off the balcony and dies,” Preston says, shaking his head in disbelief. “There are certain things that happen in your life where you can’t believe that this is a real set of circumstances.”

Payne, he says, “was a very funny, kind, gentle man. He was misunderstood. He had a great talent.” But he realizes that the songs Payne co-wrote with him were often “unconvincing cries for help.” The couple will discuss the pressures of fame together. “I saw a lot of it in myself, because we both suffered. I wish very much that I could do more. But as for some kind of intervention, I don’t think I will.” [had that role] In his life.” “Living Forever,” he says, “was I trying to say, ‘Look, man, this thing happened to me.'” But it’s hard to give people advice if they’re not ready to take it.

For the past three years, Preston has lived in Los Angeles (“the land of inequality”) and has written hit songs for Sum 41 and K-pop group Tomorrow X Together. But recently he asked himself: What makes me truly happy? “With songwriting, I felt like I was following someone else’s dream. I spent 20 years in studios trying to write music that I didn’t necessarily like.”

As for regrets, he says: “I see my mates who carried on” – mid-noughties NME bands like Kooks and the Wombats – “selling out huge arenas”. It’s as if he’s still seeking the fame he claims to despise, but he discriminates. “I like people to engage with my music. Being a famous musician is a completely different thing. If I had put in more hard work, maybe I could have done this instead, and I would have been in a completely different situation.”

After peer pressure – “I’m trying to write the perfect Ordinary Boys song” – he is currently working on the band’s comeback album. “The main thing in my life now is making some really good stuff.” It will be political, he says, about “things I’m passionate about”: billionaires, artificial intelligence, the atmosphere, and “the general hell that the world has become.”

He admits he’s not sure how to get back. “My career has been very confusing. I’ve alienated my fan base time and time again.” But he finally committed to normal boys again. “This has a focus,” he says. “I want to do it again. I want to do it bigger. I’m really ready.”