Music manager Simon Fuller has revealed that S Club 7 were a "continuation" of sorts of the Spice Girls.

The Brit managed both bands and he told BBC Radio 2 that when the Spice Girls fired him in 1997, S Club 7 were designed to take forward some ideas from his tenure with the 'Wannabe' group.

He said: "That was probably the most significant and important year of my life. It defined the next part of my career. S Club 7, in some ways, was a continuation of some of the things I'd have liked to have done with the Spice Girls. It was also a shift in tone."

Fuller continued: "S Club was this equality of boys and girls, very positive, very uplifting, didn't have the edge of the Spice Girls. I didn't want to repeat it. I wanted it to be TV-led. I wanted it to be singing and dancing and acting. And I also wanted it to be my project, so I invented S Club 7.

"I think the fact the Spice Girls could wake up and decide they didn't want to work with me anymore wasn't great, so I wanted to build my next project that couldn't disband and break up - and it was mine."

S Club 7 were formed in 1998 and the group released four albums between then and 2002.