Bardot’s 20th anniversary celebration: Belinda Chapple reveals heartbreak behind group’s sudden split

Australia’s biggest girl group was rocked by sudden departures and a “bizarre” break-up – now one member is finally telling her story.

“Don't you treat me bad, don't you make me sad, our love could be as deep as the ocean / If you can't be true, I’ve got news for you, just remember I can be poison …”

The lyrics themselves may not be as “deep as the ocean”, but they still provide a rush of nostalgia for any Australian pop fan who grew up in the early noughties.

This month marks the 20th anniversary of Poison, the debut single from this country’s biggest girl group, Bardot. The song was an instant smash hit – obviously because it was a banger, but thanks also to the hype and hysteria surrounding the first season of TV talent contest Popstars.

Bardot, LR: Katie Underwood, Tiffani Wood, Belinda Chapple, Sally Polihronas and Sophie Monk.

As the milestone approached, several former members of Bardot – Belinda Chapple, Katie Underwood and Tiffani Wood – rallied fans on Instagram, posting vintage pics, memories and new performances of their old hits. Even Chantelle Barry, who left the group in mysterious circumstances midway through Popstars’ season, joined in the fun with a performance of the debut single she never got to perform.

But two women have been noticeably absent from the social media love-in: The most well-known former Bardot member, Sophie Monk, and perhaps the least, Sally Polihronas.

Underwood went as far as to crop the two out of photos she posted to mark the reunion:

It might’ve seemed salty, but as she explained to a fan underneath the post: “Both Sally and Sophie requested not to be tagged or featured in any Bardot reunion posts so I am simply respecting their wishes. I would have loved to include them.”

Wood – always the group’s most outspoken member – wrote to a fan on her Instagram that Monk’s refusal to acknowledge the milestone had displayed “a lack of gratitude for honouring her roots. If it weren’t for Bardot she may not be in the public eye doing what she likes now.”

Amid all this, one strikingly sad line stood out in Chapple’s own post to mark the anniversary.

“I don’t talk much about my time in Bardot, as it was both exhilarating but also heartbreaking,” she wrote.

Chapple, 45, was so burned by her experience in Bardot she later turned her back on the industry, moving to Singapore and reinventing herself as an interior designer with her own brand, House of Chapple Interiors.

But 20 years on, she’s ready to tell her story – and will do so candidly in a tell-all memoir set to be released later this year. Before that, she speaks to news.com.au for the first time about the exhilaration and the heartbreak of life in Bardot.

POPSTARS MANIA

The first season of Popstars was an early prototype for the likes of today’s X Factor and The Voice. It was rough around the edges, frequently hilarious, and is prime fodder for an iso rewatch on YouTube – be sure to take a shot every time you sight judge Jackie O’s handbag:

My favourite thing about Popstars season 1 was that judge Jackie O would never be separated from her handbag pic.twitter.com/onaXQKoazZ

— Nick Bond (@bondnickbond) July 25, 2016

Chapple recently rewatched the series in full for the first time and found it “hysterical – Sophie and I had an absolute ball together; you could tell we really enjoyed our time.”

In one episode the judges visited each of the top 10 girls at home to reveal whether or not they’d made it into Bardot. You’ll watch Chapple’s slightly underwhelmed reaction to being told she’d made the cut in a whole new light now she’s confessed she was already told ahead of time and had to re-do her reaction for the cameras. “I’m the only one with a very average reaction. Bad acting on my part,” she laughs.

As the series wrapped, the five winning girls were thrust on a whirlwind tour of Australia’s Westfield Shopping Centres. Not quite Carnegie Hall, but with crowds of up to 20,000 at a time lining up to meet the group, it was an overwhelming experience.

Chapple, then 25, had already been performing as a singer and dancer for years – but nothing had prepared her for this.

“I just remember that first performance at Parramatta with the screams. The screams were so loud and almost vibrating through the walls … when we came out on stage it was like nothing I could never imagine. I’d sung and danced on that particular stage in Parramatta before, and I got such a shock. I’d never seen so many people in my life,” she says.

A STRANGE DEPARTURE

Underwood (centre) left Bardot after just a year.

Bardot’s success continued through 2000 as their hastily recorded debut album went double platinum. It was full of glossy (occasionally cheesy) pop songs without lyrical input from the group, but their third single, the moody These Days, hinted at a more mature sound to come.

And then Underwood, perhaps the band’s most distinctive member in voice and style, suddenly left to join the cast of the musical Hair.

Underwood told news.com.au in a candid 2018 interview the group’s new manager had pushed her to audition – despite the fact landing the role would mean leaving Bardot barely a year after the group had started.

Chapple says now it had seemed just as strange to her.

“We had just taken on our new manager at the time, he was all for her doing it, and it was him that orchestrated the audition,” she says. “For me personally, my biggest surprise was that our own manager wanted her to leave the band, more or less. It was an unusual choice. And that was just the beginning of what happened afterwards …”

ALBUM TWO – AND AN ABRUPT END

And then there were four: Wood, Chapple, Monk and Polihronas in March 2002, a month before announcing their split. Picture: David Caird

A few months after Underwood’s departure, Bardot returned as a four-piece with a new look and a new hit single ASAP – a catchy but lyrically bizarre diss track about a boyfriend’s nosy mother (sample lyrics: “Your momma’s in my business, can you tell her to let me be … so what’s it gonna be, gonna follow ya mum?”)

Chapple now admits she was never a fan.

“Oh god … Personally, that song wasn’t my choice. Out of all of our releases, I wasn’t a big fan of that one from day dot, but unfortunately I didn’t have my way with that song,” she says, wincing at the memory.

Thankfully, they quickly followed it up with timeless disco tune I Need Somebody, another top-five hit. Each member of the group scored co-writing credits across the second album Play It Like That. Recorded in London, it was cooler, edgier and altogether stronger than its predecessor – suddenly a successful international career seemed within reach.

But in April 2002, just two years after the release of Poison, came an official statement announcing the group’s “mutual decision” to part ways. The group cited “the need for a well-earned break” as the pace of their career had “taken a toll.”

Chapple says she regrets going along with the way Bardot ended.

While their schedule was relentless, Chapple says now she wishes she’d never signed the statement.

“I look back and I think, I was so young, and I wish I’d done things differently. I wouldn’t have gone along with everything I was being told to do and say. I wouldn’t have signed that release we were made to sign, saying it was a mutual decision and that we needed a break because we were tired,” she says.

“We hadn’t even finished promoting our second album. We had a whole year booked of really amazing gigs and performances. We were just about to head off to South Africa – the show had just aired over there and gone really well. We were booked for the second Rumba Festival. And then it all just suddenly … ceased.”

The “heartbreak” she referred in her Instagram post was not just about the abruptness of Bardot’s end but also the “traumatic” way it happened – details she promises to share in her book.

The group scored clocked up six top 20 singles across two years.

Many assumed it was Monk alone who forced the group’s end, given she released her debut solo single Inside Outside just six months later and has rarely looked back at her time in the band since. But in a 2004 interview with FHM, Polihronas revealed she was just as eager to wrap things up.

“I think when Sophie went solo, everyone assumed that it was she who broke up the band, which wasn't right. I don't know whether I should say this, but I wanted out for a long time. Sophie and I both knew that we were going to fulfil the last album and then move on,” she said.

Speaking to news.com.au in 2018, Underwood, who’d kept in touch with her ex-bandmates after she left, said she was stunned when they told her they were splitting. “But they were like, ‘The damage is done.’ They filled me in on some of the internal politics and … it was just too little, too late.”

THE ‘BIZARRE’ FINAL SHOW

Bardot in tears following their final performance together at Channel V in April 2002. Picture: Noel Kessel.

The group put on one final show to say goodbye to their fans, a special concert broadcast on Channel V. All traces of it seem to have been removed from the internet – but it made for brutal viewing. It was, by then, a group of two halves: Monk and Polihronas ready to move on and Chapple and Wood visibly devastated it was over. The pair repeatedly broke down during the show, unable to hide their emotions as they reached their final minutes in Bardot.

“The whole thing was bizarre.” says Chapple.

“That concert was really sad, and almost surreal, because we had so much to look forward to. We were about to travel the world and everything just got … cancelled. I was shell-shocked, and I know Tiffani was too.”

Chapple released a couple of solo singles and recorded demos in London that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a third Bardot album, but within a few years had left the industry entirely.

“I was so heartbroken about what happened with Bardot and how it all went down … I don’t sing and dance anymore,” she says.

ATTEMPTS TO REUNITE

The group abandoned plans for a 10-year reunion.

Underwood revealed in 2018 that the group, sans Monk, had earlier reached the planning stages of a 10-year reunion tour. “It was Sally, because she’s got the best business and marketing acumen, who put together a proposal for us all to look at about how viable it was for us to reunite,” she said.

Curiously, given her lack of involvement now, Chapple says it was also Polihronas who got the ball rolling on a planned 20th anniversary celebration.

“Sally has been very positive in trying to get us all back together for many years, and she came to us again recently and proposed a reunion to us, which is the reason why we all ended up on the phone together on the first place,” she says.

“We got really close to doing something as the four of us – we’d had a no from Sophie’s management – but Sally’s not interested anymore. She’s busy with family, with her two little ones.”

With two members firmly “not interested”, it’s left to Underwood, Chapple and Wood to carry the torch for Bardot’s 20th anniversary. Chapple says she’s been enjoying her tentative steps back into the pop realm.

“I really haven’t sung for about 15 years, but I hopped on a Zoom chat with the girls and we just love each other and wanted to sing together. I’d missed us singing together. Harmonies with three, four, five girls singing together – there’s not a lot of that in Australia. The video was really on the fly and unrehearsed, but once we did it we thought, ‘Ooh, this is nice!’ So we are talking... and we might do something further down the track for the fans.”