IT was the decade that gave us disco, glam rock, punk, funk and new wave, as well as hot pants, flares, platform shoes and tartan suits.

It was when the Beatles Let It Be, Led Zeppelin climbed their Stairway to Heaven, the Eagles checked-out of Hotel California, The Bee Gees went down with Saturday Night Fever, Fleetwood Mac started Rumours and Springsteen was Born To Run. Bowie and Bolan gave us glam rock, New York gave us disco and punk and the Eurovision Song Contest gave us Abba. And we haven’t even mentioned Queen, Elton John, Marvin Gaye and Grease...

Celebrating all of this are four familiar faces - S Club 7’s Rachel Stevens, Lee Ryan from Blue, ex-Pussycat Doll Melody Thornton and Olympic gymnast Louis Smith - in Rip it Up: The 70s, at St George’s Hall on September 17.

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After coming second on Strictly Come Dancing in 2008, then touring with a reformed S Club 7 in 2015, Rachel Stevens, 41, had been seeking another dance project. “There’s a lot of dancing in Rip It Up, that was one of the things that attracted me,” she says. “I grew up listening to 70s music.’

Life for Rachel these days is all about juggling. She’s married to former actor-turned-property developer Alex Bourne and they have two daughters, Amelie, eight, and Minnie, five. “I’m super-organised,” she says. “I have a large whiteboard at home which has every detail of what I’m doing. I think when kids know what’s going on, they feel reassured.”

Demands of motherhood mean she plans her career in a way far removed from the S Club days. “I was 20 and got swept up in the success of it,” she says. Will S Club get back together? “We’re all doing our own projects...but it would be amazing. The last tour was a celebration of what we had, there was clearly an appetite for us.”

Lee Ryan made his name in boyband Blue, and joined EastEnders in 2017. Like Rachel and Louis, he’s no stranger to the Strictly dance floor, having competed in the 2018 series. Now 36, he’s come a long way since his well-documented stints in rehab. “It made me realise that whether it’s booze or drugs, or both, you’re using them to block out bad stuff in your life. And that’s never going to be the answer,” says the father of Bluebell, 11, and Rain, 10. “They come first these days. I’ve only got another four or five years before they’re off doing their own thing, so I’m making memories now.”

Lee jumped at the chance to join Rip It Up because he and his mum both love 70s music. “I’m doing a medley of Queen’s hits, I adore Freddie Mercury, I’ve also got Stevie Wonder’s Superstition.”

Blue, he says, are still in existence. “I couldn’t tell you what’s going to happen in future but I don’t rule anything out. I’m releasing a solo single on October 4. I wrote it, based on a weird experience in rehab in Berlin. It’s called Ghost after I saw an apparition in group therapy.

“And I’m getting into producing and writing film scripts,” he adds. “I’m trying to get a couple of my own movies off the ground. That’s my goal, my dream.”

Emma Clayton