What's happened to... Brother Beyond?

IF YOU recognise the name of this week's subject, you are definitely showing your age.

Brother Beyond were a wholesome pop foursome from the late 1980s who began their career by releasing a series of sparky, likeable pop songs (How Many Times, Can You Keep a Secret and more) that nobody bought, until they were taken under the wing of 1980s "hit factory" Stock, Aitken and Waterman, who sucked all the personality out of them and made them sing plodding Motown pastiches like The Harder I Try, briefly turning them into Smash Hits cover stars and allowing them to wear terrible shirts and mug to camera on Top of the Pops.

Emboldened by this success, the band decided to go it alone on second album, Trust. It flopped.

So what happened next? Ironically, the most successful member of the band is the one who decided to leave before they became famous – Eg White, now an Ivor Novello-winning songwriter to the likes of Will Young, Natalie Imbruglia, Joss Stone and Emiliana Torrini. His own album with friend Alice Temple, 24 Years of Hunger, is a beautiful thing and worth investigating.

As for the others, singer Nathan Moore (below) joined another band, Worlds Apart, who did well in France if not here, and was last spotted on ITV's Hit Me Baby One More Time. Steve Alexander went on to tour with Duran Duran, David White went to art college and now paints, and Carl Fysh works for a PR company in London, making calls on behalf of other pop stars, much to the excitement of journalists of a certain age, who get to ask "Didn't you used to be in Brother Beyond?" on the phone.