Dear JLS fans,
Right now, it may feel like your heart won't beat again, but I'm here to tell you that it will. Just have a little patience.
For me, it was 1996. I'd just changed out of my school uniform and shrugged into my favourite Everything Changes '93 tour t-shirt. Take That had announced a press conference and, as per every TV appearance, I had a blank VHS tape poised to record them (FYI, this is how we 'stored' TV before Sky Plus. A tape was the size of your iPad mini. No joke.)
The camera zoomed into Gary Barlow, his blonde highlights shining under the lights, wearing a proper fashionable zig-zag print shirt from Mr Byrite (probably). Then he uttered the immortal words that would break my pre-pubescent heart for the first time ever. "Unfortunately the rumours are true…" and "From today, there's no more." The rest just fuzzed into background noise as I sat head in hands.
Cue: big, honking sobs as I hugged my t-shirt tightly around me. I couldn't even eat my tea. A sad plate of fish fingers and Alphabetti Saghetti would remain untouched. Smiley potato faces taunting me in my sorrow. I removed my flashing devil horns from my head. Suddenly they didn't mean anything anymore. Take That were over. In the words of one Thatter who made that evening's TV news, "It was like having a body, having your arm cut off and your body will never be the same again."
I phoned my best friend on her house phone. 'Is Debbie there, please?' I asked her dad – because parents were kinda like switchboard operators before we had BBM. We didn't say anything. We didn't have to. Instead, we sobbed in unison.
The grieving process went something like this: I sketched a picture of Mark Owen, I wrote letter to Just Seventeen's agony aunt Anita Naik and enclosed a stamped addressed envelope. Life became normal-ish and I started to enjoy the small pleasures again – a Wham bar and a can of Tab Clear on the way home from school, a particularly gripping episode of Byker, a new scrunchie to wear around my wrist. I bought my mum a thank you card from Woolworths, for supporting me through such a tough time. Eventually, I would go on to meet real boys, and compare every single one of them (and their curtains hair) to Mark Owen.
So whilst you are sitting there YouTubing the video for Everybody In Love, but only just finding strength to put your hands up, know this: Ten years after Take That split, my heart was mended. In 2006, in the stands of Milton Keynes Bowl, Debbie and I looked at each other as the opening bars to Never Forget rang out. Everything was going to be okay. Everything had changed but them.
So hang on in there, JLS fans. When they come back, they will be EVEN hotter than the first time around (except perhaps for the little one), but you can't win 'em all. Until then, I think there's a helpline.
Yours, Tracy
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