Tally Bookbinder says her two-year stint as Take That’s personal make-up artist began with a trial in Italy and ended with her travelling the world with the five-piece during the height of their fame. The job, she said, took her from studio work to tours and television, and left her with memories that still stand out decades later.

Bookbinder said she was 26 when Nigel Martin-Smith asked her to fly to Italy with the band the following week. What she found in Rome set the tone: a handwritten note in her hotel room welcoming her to Italy and inviting her down for a drink in the bar. She said the boys put her at ease immediately, especially because she was from Manchester too, and that the trial went well enough for Mark Owen to tell her she had got the job.

From 1994 to 1996, she said, she was responsible for keeping Gary, Mark, Jason, Howard and Robbie camera-ready as Take That moved through photo sessions, concerts and television appearances. One day, she said, she was doing hair and make-up for Top Of The Pops; the next, she was painting a tattoo on Howard’s chest. She also handled the band’s look for the Back For Good video, the rain-soaked three-day shoot that became one of the group’s best-known images.

That shoot came at a cost. Bookbinder said she got so soaked during filming that she later caught bronchial pneumonia. Even so, she described the period as one of the most unforgettable of her career, and said the band’s lack of ego was part of what made it work. In her telling, they were famous but still easy to be around, and they wanted someone they could trust on their side.

The Italy trial also showed how quickly the scale of Take That’s popularity was changing. Bookbinder said the lobby was a fan frenzy, and that the crowd around the group was so wild she worried someone might get run over as girls threw themselves in front of the cars. Even after that, she said, Mark Owen offered her a lift home after the flight back to the UK and even stopped at her house to use the loo before telling her, in effect, that she had the job.

For all the glamour of the assignment, Bookbinder’s account is a reminder that the band’s rise was built on long days, rain, travel and trust as much as on hits. Her memories fill in the private side of Take That at its peak, and the sharpest unanswered detail is the simplest one: exactly when in Italy that first trial took place, and how much more of the band’s rise she saw before her time with them ended in 1996.