Inside Busted stars’ turbulent lives since split – from rehab hell to holiday drowning horror and Scientology saga
WHEN Charlie Simpson quit Busted in 2005, he left fans and James Bourne and Matt Willis heartbroken.
With hits like What I Go To School For and Year 3000, the band were at the peak of their career when Charlie, 37, decided he no longer wanted to be part of it.
The boys briefly returned in 2016, with a third album Night Driver, and they’re now officially going back on tour together this year.
But they’ve been through a lot during their years apart, including a mental breakdown, stints in rehab and even a brush with Scientology.
Mental breakdown
It was Charlie who signalled the end of Busted back in 2005, after five years, with him deciding he wanted to focus on his rock band Fightstar – consisting of him, guitarist Alex Westaway, bassist Dan Haigh and drummer Omar Abidi.
Despite the enormous success Busted were having, with hit after hit, Charlie has said he was “so unhappy”.
He told The Sun: “I only really told my family and close friends but I think Matt and James had an idea I was unhappy.
“At the time the real life I was leading was with Fightstar.”
Charlie said he “broke down” months before he finally quit.
He told The Sun: “I was going to leave a lot earlier than I did but I had lots of commitments and didn’t want to let anyone down.
“I was living two lives with two different bands and it just got too much.
“Nine months before I left Busted I was in Germany and I broke down.
“I nearly had a mental breakdown.
“I asked my manager to not book anything else, so that I could leave Busted as soon as I had a completely free schedule.”
Charlie has never had the same success with Fightstar as he had with Busted.
Despite having released 15 singles together, the highest any has charted is number nine, and that was the first song released after his departure from Busted.
The band’s last two songs, released in 2015, didn’t chart.
Alcohol addictions
During his time in Busted, Matt developed alcohol and drug addictions, and he sought help for the first time just three months into dating his now-wife Emma Willis in 2004.
After Busted split, Matt went on to win I’m A Celebrity the following year – but his addictions got worse.
Emma has spoken of how she stuck by him, and refused to leave his side.
She told The Telegraph: “I wasn’t going to leave him because he had a problem.
“I wanted to help him, but he had to help himself and I believed he would.”
Turning life around for kids
Matt has been sober since 2008, and is father to Isabelle, 13, Ace, 11, and Trixie, six.
He believes it was becoming a dad that forced him to turn his life around, especially as he missed the first time Isabelle crawled, due to his alcoholism.
Speaking to Giovanna Fletcher on her Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast, he previously said: “When Isabelle was born, I stayed clean for a while, and then I relapsed again when she was about six months old.
“I kind of, I missed Emma’s birthday. She was in Birmingham and I was doing a TV show at the time.
“It was the wrap party and I had a glass of champagne and I was off to the races that night; I turned up at her parent’s house at four in the morning like it was nothing off my head.”
“It was the worst,” Matt continued. “The next morning, I knew what I’d done. Emma told me that I missed Isabelle crawling.”
Getting choked up and fighting back tears, Matt went on: “I missed that, you know; and it really dawned on me that I was a terrible father.
“It kind of – it really hit me. I saw everything, that cycle of s**t repeating, and it hit me like a tonne of bricks.
“Everyone talks about hitting rock bottom and things and I’ve always been scared of those words because people die at rock bottoms, they’re a scary thing to define.
“For me that was a turning point, I ran out of the house, I walked down the road to this pub and I didn’t go in, I had some gear in my pocket which I chucked in the bin.
“I bought a Lucozade, I walked back to the house and I got on my knees and I apologised and I said I was so sorry.”
“You know, for the first time, I really meant it,” he concluded.
‘Fully invested’ in Scientology
Matt has previously revealed he became “fully invested” in Scientology.
Matt made daily visits to the London headquarters of the movement – that John Travolta and Tom Cruise are a part of.
But he claimed he had started to realise the group was trying to separate him from Emma.
He told us: “I was fresh out of rehab, a bit lost in the world. I was walking down Tottenham Court Road and I got approached by a guy who asked me a few simple questions.
“Before I knew it, the next week I arrived at the doors to the Scientology building. Every single day I went there. I bought different books and did different courses. I was in.
“They buddied me up with a young guy who was very, very involved. His mum and dad were part of the big leagues. We did some one-to-one work, all questions about my life — what’s going on, what’s holding me back and holding my potential back?
“They were like, ‘There’s someone in your life who’s actually draining you, who’s a negative force, and it’s normally the person closest to you’. And it’s like, ‘I think they’re trying to split my f***ing marriage up now’.
“They were trying to force this weird opinion on me. When I look back at it, I was like, ‘Are you trying to separate me from everybody else?’
“Then you’re fully in because you’ve got no family or friends and your family and friends are the Church of Scientology. It took me a while to go, ‘Wait a sec, what the f*** is this?’
“They didn’t want me to f***ing leave. They brought other people in when I was talking about it to talk about what concerns I may have.
“I just never went back, stopped picking up my phone to them. But they rang me every day for a month and they drop into my texts every six months, eight months, out the blue, like, ‘Hey, Matt, how are you doing?’”
Matt left the church after three months of study following a “big row”, but until recently he kept hold of Dianetics, the Scientology bible written by L Ron Hubbard.
He admitted on his podcast When No One’s Watching, last year: “I only chucked Dianetics away about two years ago.
“I was like, ‘I’m going to f***ing read that one day’.
“I tried to. It is f***ing enormous and really boring. I got about eight pages in. It doesn’t make any sense.”
And he had one last warning for anyone interested in joining Scientology.
He said: “It’s a very, very weird place, so if anyone’s thinking about checking it out, I would advise against it.”
Holiday horror drowning
Charlie married Anna Barnard in 2014, and they share sons Arlo, seven, and Jago, five.
Last year, their youngest was rushed to hospital on holiday abroad, and suffered “secondary drowning“.
Secondary or dry drowning occurs when the child inhales water while swimming, causing the vocal chords to spasm and contract.
The rare occurrence can be fatal and symptoms occur within one to 24 hours after being in the water.
After witnessing Jago spluttering in the water, and later becoming lethargic, Charlie rang a doctor who told them to come to A&E.
Charlie said it took them an hour to travel to hospital during which time Jago’s condition deteriorated.
The dad-of-two said: “He seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness.
“He was rushed through to have CT scans and X-Rays and to our absolute horror, we were told that he had water in his lungs and was minutes away from pneumonia.
“Jago was diagnosed with secondary drowning.
“He spent the next three days in hospital and I’m so thankful for the amazing care he received. It was the worst thing we have ever experienced.”
Musical theatre success
Both James and Matt have had success in musical theatre.
Matt made his West End debut as Nick in Flashdance: The Musical in 2010, and has since appeared in everything from Footloose, to Wicked, to Little Shop of Horrors.
In 2021, he joined the UK tour of Waitress playing Dr Pomatter.
Meanwhile, after Busted split, James formed another pop rock band named Son of Dork.
Their first single, Ticket Outta Loserville, reached number three in the charts in November 2005, and their second single, Eddie’s Song, hit a high of No10.
Although a split was never officially announced, Dave Williams, Chris Leonard and Steve Rushton all left to pursue other projects.
But James turned their debut album into Loserville: The Musical, which opened in the West End in October 2012.
It closed three months later, but also ran in the East Coast, USA, at the beginning of 2020.
McBusted to Busted revival
James was the brains behind most of Busted’s hits, as well as some of McFly’s, including Obviously and Five Colours in Her Hair.
So, in 2013, James and Matt formed supergroup McBusted, together with Tom Fletcher, Harry Judd, Danny Jones and Dougie Poynter.
From 2013 to 2015, McBusted performed to sell-out arena gigs and also released new music.
Then, in 2015, seemingly having witnessed their success, Charlie announced he would be reuniting with Matt and James – something no fan ever thought would happen.
At the time, Charlie insisted the pay cheque wasn’t the reason for his change of heart.
He told The Sun: “I can see why someone would think I want a piece of the action after seeing the success of McBusted, but financial motivation isn’t what this is about.
“Anyone who knows me knows I love music and I could have made a lot more money staying in Busted in the first place. I wouldn’t just do it for money.
“I genuinely thought we would never re-form. So really I am the most shocked out of everyone.”
They released album Night Driver in 2016, which came in at number 16 in the charts, and then Half Way There in 2019, which fared better, peaking at number two.
But the band went on hiatus again at the end of 2019, with James announcing he wanted to pursue solo music.
Masked Singer win
Ironically, it was seemingly Charlie who got the band back together again for an upcoming tour and brand new album.
He performed on the Masked Singer as Rhino and won the show, beating Ricky Wilson as Phoenix.
James said of their second comeback: “It’s out of this world that we get to do this and we couldn’t be more excited about it.
“It’s going to be wicked.”