Guys, before he was winning hearts as Colin Bridgerton in our fav Netflix series, actor Luke Newton was in a pretty cringe boy band. Yes, really.

Luke Newton grew up in Sussex, and in his college years formed the boy band South 4 with friends Oli, Joel and Henry. At the height of the band’s success, the boys were backed to be “Sussex’s answer to One Direction” and were given a £1million record deal. But alas, the success was short lived and it all became a bit of a flop.

A local newspaper report in 2012 said “teenage girls get ready” as “Sussex’s answer to One Direction are about to go big.” It reported the boys had signed a £1million record deal with Eagle Music label. Aged 18 and 19 at the time, the four met whilst studying at Brit School, and were then set to release their debut single Cougar Town.

On YouTube there are still videos live of the boys during rehearsals and doing local radio interviews to promote their music. In one interview, band member Oli said: “We’re really excited about the single. We think it will one of the hits of the summer.”

The rehearsal videos are quite jokes to look at now – think heavy on the 00s boy trends like Obey shirts and big hair quiffs, and the boys clearly loved a choreographed performance, with the clip showing them mimicking holding mics and jumping and dancing around a studio.

In an interview promoting Bridgerton season three, Nicola Coughlan played a prank on Luke and brought up his boy band. He said the pair of them were rehearsing a dance scene, and Nicola had set it up so that his ear piece played the one track his band ended up releasing. The song then played out for the entire room.

“It’s called Cougar Town – it’s about a hot mom,” Nicola said of the song. “It played out all across the ball room.” In a clip, you can see the entire cast and extras then start dancing to the song.

I love their relationship so much??