Brace yourselves, Five fans, because there’s bad news. After much speculation, the British boyband has announced that they will end the group after four years. All five members of the group appeared on the UK’s MTV Select show on Thursday afternoon and announced the sad news live on air.

Band member Ritchie Neville broke the news to fans by saying, “On October 22, we’ll be releasing a double A-side, Close To Me/Rock The Party. Unfortunately it will be our last ever single.”

“We have actually finished today,” J Brown went on to say. “Five are no more. The video will be a collage of our finest moments. We’re not going to make any money from it. It will just be nice for people.”

In the past, the bad-boy band had been known to argue and were even taken to court over a fight that took place in Dublin, Ireland. J says this did not cause the break up of Five, and “we all love each other more than ever.”

Scott Robinson added, “We don’t want any fans to feel upset. We’re all happy. If we carried on, we’d end up arguing and hating each other. So it’s a positive thing. We’re great friends and we always will be. We’re like brothers.”

Ritchie and Scott, broke down in tears when an upset fan called in to commiserate with the stars. Ritchie closed the appearance with a final comment: “We are not splitting up. We are leaving. We’re making a tactical withdrawal.”

Reports indicated the split was caused when shy member, Sean Conlon decided to leave the group, just weeks before the release of their single, Let’s Dance and third album, Kingsize. The management covered this up by pretending that Sean had glandular fever, according to the UK report.

The band (Abs Breen, J Brown, Ritchie Neville, Scott Robinson and Sean Conlon) issued the following statement: “We’ve matured and developed massively as a band over the last three and a half years and have also grown as individuals. As the band has got bigger on a global scale the commitment levels have had to increase and that at times has been hard on us all. We felt that we had reached a point where we could no longer do justice to our fans or to each other and when that happens, it really is time to call it a day. We want to say a massive thank you to all of the Five fans who have got us to where we are today – we will miss you all.”






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