IT’S an intimidating sight, all five of The Saturdays in one place. Mollie King, Una Foden, Vanessa White, Rochelle Humes and Frankie Bridge are an excitable bunch, all eager to talk and aware that getting a word in can’t be taken for granted when there are four other people in your band.

King and Foden seem the de facto leaders; King comes across as the sensible one of the bunch, while Foden, who’s a few years older than the rest of the group, is the matriarch; maternal and in charge.

The girls recently released their first greatest hits collection, Finest Selection, and to support the album, they’re touring to Newcastle City Hall next month.

They may only have formed in 2008, but often when bands release their greatest hits, it’s after they’ve reformed after years apart, or when they’re about to split up.

“Not at all,” says 25-year-old Humes when that possibility is mentioned, emphatically denying that they’re planning to go their separate ways after the tour. “It’s a natural question, but this tour is more of a celebration and a marker of where we’re at than anything else.”

“It was always a dream plan to be able to do a greatest hits,”

continues King, 27. “We started off putting one album out and just took it from there. We didn’t plan too far ahead and can’t believe we’re still around, but the fact we are still here, seven years and five albums in, was always something we all hoped would happen.”

They’re reluctant to give away too many details of the live show at the moment, saying they want it to be a surprise for their fans, but they do admit they’re excited about what’s in store.

“We’re rehearsing, and we’ve planned all the staging, costumes and dancers,” says King. “We’ve been at this stage lots of times before, but this is a greatest hits tour, so it is different. It’s a big step and we want everything to be as good as it can possibly be. We’re going for a big production, the stages are going to be amazing, there’ll be a lot of amazing lighting.

We’ll be going hell for leather,” she adds, causing the rest of the band to crack up with laughter.

“We haven’t actually been on tour like this for a couple of years,” says Foden, 32. “We’ve performed a lot, but not a full tour. It’s our favourite thing to do, so it’s very refreshing to get into it.”

There was a time when putting together greatest hits albums was something bands only did decades into their career. But times have changed, and The Saturdays have experienced a lot in the past seven years.

Mostly in their teens and early 20s when they formed, they were propelled into the limelight, kicking things off by supporting Girls Aloud on tour. Their debut single shortly afterwards, If This Is Love, was a top-ten hit, and their first album, Chasing Lights, reached Number 9 in the album charts and went platinum.

These days, three of them have become parents (Foden had daughter Aoife Belle in 2012, Humes had Alaia-Mai in 2013 and Bridge gave birth to her son, Parker, last year) and, it turns out, there’s still a lot they hope to achieve.

“We want to keep getting better,”

says Bridge, who has just returned from her honeymoon after marrying footballer Wayne Bridge in July, and will be one of the celebs taking part in the next series of Strictly Come Dancing.

As well as plotting the tour, the five-piece have very nearly finished their sixth album, which they hope will be released before the end of the year. They’ve been heavily involved in the songwriting, and continue their tradition of splitting up to write separately.

“It can get a bit congested if we all write together,” says King. “Too many cooks, that kind of thing.

And it can be noisy if we’re all shouting out ideas too. Listening back to what we’ve all been doing is really exciting, I love hearing what the others have been doing.”

Of course, juggling family life is something the girls now have to contend with too. “It doesn’t change the dynamic of the group,” says Humes. “We’ve always had personal lives outside of the group, and whether we’re married and have kids or not, it doesn’t affect the group.”

“If anything, it’s made us stronger,” says Bridge.

  • September 9 – Newcastle City Hall