Jay McGuiness (The Wanted)

October 2010

Jay McGuinness

The 20-year-old Notts-born member of the chart-topping boy band The Wanted would like to take the family to Benidorm. But he can’t, he’s working.

WE’VE been on a radio tour this week and this weekend we’ll be doing a few club gigs. It’s all to promote the new single that’s out on Monday.

The weekend’s that we get off are a bit random. We could be having our weekend on a Wednesday, it all depends on the work. But we tend to chill out at home if we get time off because we’re usually pretty tired.

We all live together in the same house in London. It’s so good I can’t tell you.

Before, I was travelling down from Nottingham just to meet up with the rest of them and we’d all be staying in hotels. So the management said it would make more sense for us to share a house.

We’ve got a ping pong table, a dart board, table football... so during the day we’d stay in, then go out at night around Camden or just to a nearby pub.

We’re pretty similar in our tastes, we like the same films and we all watch the match when that’s on, so no-one hogs the remote. We watch a lot of documentaries, like David Attenborough and stuff like that. And the X Factor.

I love Avatar and we recently watched Taken, which was brilliant. To be honest I’m watching most films on planes. We’ve been flying a lot recently. As a kid I didn’t get to watch a lot of films at the cinema, so I love flying because there’s like a massive library of films to go through. I’ve been watching a few old classics and some of the new blockbusters. I watch five films in a row. I love it.

When we’re on the road we don’t go to restaurants much at all, it’s a petrol station job. I’ve had so many egg sandwiches...

Tom does a lot of the cooking at home. He’s quite good at that.

And we’ve got a Polish cleaner who is absolutely amazing. We go off in the morning for a day of TV, then gigging at night and leave the house like a bomb site. We’re all right putting some washing on but we leave plates and food everywhere.

When we get back at four in the morning it’s pristine. She absolutely rips through it, she’s brilliant.

I never had a fitness regime before I joined the group and nothing’s really changed. They’ve not said we have to go the gym or anything. As long as we’re healthy and able to do the job they don’t really care.

I’ve just finished reading a horror book called It (by Stephen King) about a clown. And I’ve just started one called Assassin’s Creed (by Oliver Bowden), which I think is a game as well. I’m the only one of us who reads anything.

We don’t get loads of time to see gigs. If we’re doing one ourselves and there’s someone else on the bill, by the time we’ve finished and got packed up and stuff, they’ve either done their set or we’ve got to shoot off to the next gig.

We saw quite a lot of The Saturdays when we toured with them. They’re really cool girls.

If I could do anything at the weekend, with no limits, I’d get all my family and friends together and go to Benidorm. We had a week there a few months ago and it was the best holiday I’ve ever had.

The Wanted’s new single, Heart Vacancy, is out on Monday. Their debut album is due out October 25.