"A lot of people have said to me Whole Again has been a massive hit despite being by Atomic Kitten! They weren't taken very seriously. "Effectively other songwriters got involved and the record company thought, `We've got a winning formula, let's repeat it ad nauseam' and eventually after three years the nausea set in. If I'd had my way they certainly wouldn't have ended up being perceived as a band that does cover versions and songs that just keep sounding like a reworking of Whole Again. The only saving grace is I can't be held responsible for the kind of lame band they turned into. "Unfortunately we ended up going our separate ways for reasons my lawyer tells me I'm not even allowed to talk about. It just proves the problem with pop music these days is they spend a million pounds on the varnish because they're polishing a piece of poo. "We accidentally bluffed the record company into releasing one more record with the cheapest budget you'd ever seen, the cheapest video, and lo and behold, without all the marketing and posters and advertising, a great song (Whole Again) with a good band singing their socks off turned out to be enough to have a hit. The first few singles were hits, but when the album came out it only reached the giddy heights of number 37 and they got dropped. Obviously we didn't really know what the hell we were doing, we got incredibly lucky that we got a deal with them.
"The sense of obligation and pressure on me was huge. "My big claim to fame when I retired from OMD - some would say I went from the sublime to the ridiculous - was that I created Atomic Kitten," he says. Andy was, in fact, for better or for worse, the creator of Atomic Kitten and co-writer of the mammoth-selling Whole Again. Singer Andy McCluskey and band partner Paul Humphreys penned eternal classics like Enola Gay, Maid of Orleans and Souvenir - all of which will be given a live airing when they play Newcastle City Hall next weekīut Andy's biggest hit came in 2001 - long after OMD's chart career had ended - and it catapulted three lasses to international fame. In their heyday, OMD notched up an impressive list of hit singles, selling millions of records around the world. Entertainment Editor Gordon Barr chats to singer Andy McCluskey ahead of next week's Newcastle City Hall gig. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are on the comeback trail.