Untitled 339314 (ePub)

I'm in the back seat of a car. It's dark outside. It's dark inside too. I'm with three strangers. I don't know their names. All I know is that they want the same thing as me: oblivion. We're not there to have fun. This is no party. We're just there to use, and in that moment I'm helpless to resist. Someone else is in control...

As a misfit teenager, Matt Willis was catapulted into the limelight with his band Busted, whose hits What I Go To School For and Year 3000 climbed the charts and earned Brit awards, before they sensationally split at the very height of their fame.

But the wild and carefree image Matt projected to the world hid the dark and troubled reality he was battling away from the spotlight. From the age of twelve, Matt had exhibited addictive behaviour. When fame arrived, his addictions took hold. To his fans and to the world he was Matt from Busted: a charming, cheeky pop star in the UK's biggest band. Behind closed doors, he descended into a spiral of alcoholism and drug abuse so extreme it threatened to destroy his world and that of those closest to him.

Mending is Matt's candid account of his life, from his early days as a tearaway on the streets of London, through the giddy highs of forming Busted and seeing his band become a household name, to the depths of his brutal addictions and the desperate places to which they led him.

Told with Matt's trademark humour and rare honesty, Mending is by turns entertaining, devastating and uplifting. Full of never-before-told stories of life in the band, it is required reading for every Busted fan. But it is also a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of fame and an insight into the mind of an addict. Most of all it is a powerful and moving story of how one man overcame his demons, turned his life around and became the person he was always meant to be.