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WHEN you arrive to interview Sugababes and one of them is nowhere to be seen, your first thought is that she may have followed two previous fixtures of the line-up and quit.

Thankfully, as Heidi Range and Amelle Berrabah, the latest addition to the line-up after joining the group in 2005 to replace Mutya Buena, prepare to answer questions, it's clear why original Sugababe Keisha Buchanan isn't present.

"She's just running a bit late," Heidi assures us. "She'll be here soon, but let's crack on."

The girls released their fifth album Change, the first with Amelle, at the end of last year to critical success.

"I wasn't nervous about doing it, I just couldn't wait to get stuck in," says Amelle, enthusiastically.

"I'm a songwriter, like Keisha and Heidi are, so I really wanted to get in there, do some writing and get a couple of things off my chest.

"We're really happy with how it's gone and it means that bit more to me because I've been there from the start this time, and we've done it all together."

But there's still the usual gossip in the tabloid newspapers and celebrity magazines that the girls in the band aren't being very nice to the newest member.

Siobhan Donaghy left the band in 2001, amid reports that Keisha and fellow member, at the time, Mutya Buena were freezing her out. She was duly replaced by Heidi, and the news was once again rife with stories they were bullying the third 'Babe.

However, they denied there were any rifts, and rode the storm.

"I didn't get it at the time, but now I see why people might have thought there was a divide in the group," says Keisha, while explaining why she was late. ("I overslept, then I drove over in mad traffic and I thought I was going to run out of petrol.") "People would walk into a room, see Heidi dressed in jeans and a belly top, with long blonde hair and really cheery attitude, and then see me and Mutya, sitting back with our arms crossed, looking sullen, wearing bandanas and tracksuits, they thought there was a rift."

Even if there was, it didn't involve Heidi, as Mutya, who had recently become a mother, was the next to leave.

Amelle was duly unveiled as the new addition, which gave the tabloids the perfect excuse to write a story that Amelle was now on the verge of quitting the group thanks to the other two being so cruel to her.

"I was on holiday when that came out," says Amelle. "Keisha was on holiday too, and Heidi was eating in the Hell's Kitchen restaurant. We were all excited to come back, start a new thing, and then it's bang, here we go again. It's strange to us, because we're in a really good place. We know we get along with each other, and we're good friends and it's just weird that it comes up all the time.

"It's weird, because before I joined the band, I used to think the things that were in the papers were true. I thought that Keisha and Mutya were horrible to Heidi and all the rest of it, but now I've joined, I know the truth."

"It's just a bit boring," continues Heidi, who seems to be genuinely hurt from the reappearance of the story. "It's about the fifth time it's come out and it's horrible to do promo and that is all we're talking about."

For the record, the girls do seem happy, and while it might be easy to fake being nice to one another for a few hours at a time, they have a closeness that can't be put on.

The success of recent album Change has come as no surprise to the girls. It is their most international-sounding to date and was produced by Dallas Austin in his Atlanta studio, a producer who has crafted hits for the likes of Madonna, Michael Jackson, Pink, TLC and Gwen Stefani.

"Dallas is great, he's like my big brother or a mentor," confesses Keisha. He definitely loves a good party too, so if you like to party and you go there, it's not necessarily a good thing. We didn't get any work done until Heidi asked when we were going to start!

"He's got hundreds of stories about the people he's worked with," she continues. "Also, you'll be in the studio and he'll say one of my boys is coming over, is that cool?'. Then his boy' turns up, and it's Andre 3000 from Outkast, or P Diddy walks into the studio like it's a normal thing to happen!"

It sounds like they deserve every sale after filming the video for single About You Now.

Filmed on London's South Bank by Ken Livingstone's mayoral office, the trio were under the impression it would be a closed set like the rest of their shoots.

"It was so embarrassing," says Heidi with her head in her hands. "Not for one second did I think it was going to be actually ON the South Bank. I was shaking. I get nervous for videos anyway, for the first few takes I'm terrible. You have to stand there looking into a camera, trying to look sexy which is embarrassing anyway, even if it's only in front of the crew. But we had to do it in front of people commuting to and from work. It was awful!"

n Sugababes are at the Bic on Monday and Portsmouth Guildhall on April 30. For tickets visit bic.co.uk or portsmouthguildhall.co.uk.

2:17pm Friday 18th April 2008

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