Piper

"It was my first time out on my own tour and I just wanted to go in there and hit the ground running. All the concert specials I'd done up until then were very basic, staging wise, and I just wanted to be as elaborate as possible, and nobody I know does elaborate better than Wade. He and I come up with some crazy, impossible stuff when we're just throwing ideas out, but then he'll come back to me two days later and he'll have actually worked out how to do it. Don't ask me how. It's either divine inspiration or he made a deal with a devil somewhere. But yeah, we picked a circus theme, nearly called the tour Ringmaster before deciding that sounded too much like Ticketmaster and going for Enter the Circus instead, and away we went with these crazy ideas."

Wade

"We decided we wanted to go with a circus theme, which I think… I think it came out of Piper saying her life was a circus, but then we jumped on it because we were thinking fire eaters and high wires and trapeze and then those amazing kind of Cirque du Soleil stunts - I have never done a tour with so much wire work. We had to have like six more safety supervisors than usual because of all the wire stunts we did, but it looked amazing and it was able to bring Piper and her dancers out to all the people at the back of the arena too, so everybody was included in the show."

Johnny Wright, manager

"The tour was ambitious, very ambitious, especially since it was her first major tour. She'd done some small club venues and she'd done mini concert specials for various TV companies, but she'd never gone on what you might call a true tour, a headlining tour, which was because of the timing and how long it took us to really launch her career. So by the time we got around to touring the demand was huge, and we all kind of looked sideways at each other and we were trying to work out how many cities… we scheduled what was a fairly standard length tour, tested it out in the UK first, and she was sold out within half an hour. The entire tour. So we hastily added some more dates over there and they sold out similarly fast and suddenly our plans for the US got a heck of a lot bigger!"

Justin

"Man, she must have done… God, I dread to even think how many shows. She was constantly touring for about a year, non-stop. I never saw her anywhere resembling home, I was flying out everywhere to go see her… Australia, England, Germany, I even did Korea once. It was a crazy time."

The Enter the Circus tour kicked off in London, England in 2004. It covered the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Holland, Spain and Italy before heading East for dates in Korea and Japan, finally touching down in the United States and Canada for its last leg.

Piper

"Fans overseas are so different, it's amazing, like English crowds are always really high energy and just totally into the show, but people in the Far East I find are like nuts if they just encounter you in the street or at the airport but during shows they're like really polite during the songs, they just kind of watch and take everything in and then go crazy once the song's over. I saw so many places that tour, it was incredible. Had to rush through a hell of a lot of them without getting to explore but wherever I could I went and soaked up some culture, it was a really cool time even though it was so exhausting."

JC Chasez, *NSYNC member

"I remember going to catch her show one time and being totally in awe of the whole thing - she must have had like the most intricate set ever, things popping out of everywhere and then the dancers were like animal tamers one minute and clowns the next and Piper was just everywhere, coming out of the floors and in the air and… I think my favourite part of the whole show was this ballad she did and she had her dancers doing trapeze over the audience… I mean it wasn't real trapeze because they were all wired up and couldn't physically fall, which I guess is good because nobody pays to go to a concert and get squished from above, but it looked incredible."

Wade

"It was the most intricate tour I've ever choreographed. Most dangerous, too, our insurance premiums were through the frickin' roof and they actually wouldn't let the dancers do everything, we had to hire actual licensed stunt people for some of the stuff because we were being so ambitious. I just wanted people to leave feeling like they'd never seen anything like it, and Piper was just game for anything."

The tour broke records for a female artist, grossing over 90 million dollars in the US alone. But nothing comes without a price, and the schedule began taking its toll on Piper's body.

Piper TRL Italy 2004

"I think this is the hardest I've ever worked in my life! I'm doing all these shows and interviews and radio and stuff like that in every city and I've still got a couple singles to get out so I'm shooting videos wherever I've got time… it's madness, my life really is a circus right now so the tour's quite fitting!"

Maggie

"I just remember her shrinking, she lost so much weight because she was sweating it out every night. People were starting to wonder if she had an eating disorder, which she used to just brush off as nonsense but worried me because even though she assured me it wasn't true, I could see why people were thinking that."

Johnny Wright

"I actually had wardrobe come up to me and say they were having a problem keeping up with Piper's weight loss, which was worrying. She assured me she was eating and it was just the show taking it out of her, but we as a result hired a nutritionist to just keep an eye on it, which seemed to help some so we relaxed a little after that."

Lynn Harless, mother in law.

"Those lights are bright. And you're dancing your butt off for 90 minutes under these real hot lights, running in and out of quick change, constantly moving and it's every night, plus any rehearsals you might have needed that day or any performances you might have done for TV shows that day… everybody loses weight on tour, I've seen Justin do it too. Piper used to worry me however because whenever she was busy or stressed she'd get preoccupied and she'd forget to look after herself properly because she was so focussed on the work, and Maggie and I used to fuss over her so much I think she got real irritated with it!"

Wade

"It was a very physically demanding show. Piper was fit enough for it, no question, but week after week you do start getting run down and in retrospect, she wasn't given enough of a break between legs to really recover from it, plus all the videos and stuff she was doing in between. I still feel kind of responsible for that, I have to say."

Piper

"It's my own fault and nobody else's. I should have been more sensible and spoken up, but I was so determined to push myself that little further and just in denial about how exhausted I really was, just didn't notice how tetchy and irritable I was getting and just how generally tired I was all the time. I was falling asleep everywhere, I became practically narcoleptic which to anybody else would have been a slow down signal but me, I was just too high on the performing buzz and the way it made me feel like Supergirl even though I clearly wasn't… and Supergirl might not have needed a break but I did."

Pushing herself didn't just cost Piper her health - it also cost her the love of her life. Tired of worrying about his absent girlfriend and fed up of the constant separation, Justin Timberlake called it quits with his girlfriend of three years, leaving Piper to face the rest of the tour and the media intrusion without the man she had called her soulmate.

Justin

"It sounds like I was just being an asshole, when I say it back now, but I was just sick of worrying about her. Long distance relationships aren't exactly easy to begin with, but I was seeing her maybe half as much as I had before… and I hadn't exactly been seeing her a lot before. Every time I saw her on TV she was shrinking, every time she was on the phone she was grouchy and unresponsive and I just knew something was up, but she kept insisting it wasn't and we just started fighting way too much. I couldn't see her and it was killing me and I couldn't do it any more."

Piper

"It was stupid, we stopped communicating with each other and even the little time we were getting together at award shows or when he'd manage to fly out on a day off - and it was always him because I never had time off - we would just waste the little time we did have together being awkward and snippy with each other and that's just no way to have a relationship. I can't blame him for breaking up with me."

Maggie

"It wasn't anything major, neither of them cheated or did anything to really hurt the other, it was just this constant tension and fights over nothing that just built up to a point where Justin felt he couldn't be in that situation any longer. And as much as I hated seeing Piper the way she was after, I never blamed Justin for that because…it's… that's just not the way love is supposed to be."

Justin

"Final straw? I flew cross country to spend maybe half a day with her, and I got there and she had an interview scheduled last second when I was supposed to be having some time with my girlfriend. And I went nuts. I went seriously ape shit. And I told her that if I couldn't even schedule time with her then there was just no point."

Piper

"Never made it to that damn interview. Too busy crying. Kind of ironic really."

The break up didn't stay secret for long. Although Justin and Piper agreed to keep it to themselves fir the time being, somebody leaked the story to LA radio station KISS and before long it had hit the internet. Every news outlet seemed to be running the story, and the couple were forced to release a statement confirming the rumour.

Johnny Wright

"If I ever find out who leaked that damn story… it was horrible. I had an *NSYNC team and a Piper team full of people who could have leaked the story, and suddenly nobody knew who to trust. And in the meantime, the two of them were both going through… the emotional wringer, basically, and they didn't have a chance to catch their breaths before suddenly it was everywhere and the speculation was everywhere."

Lynn Harless

"They were both being accused of cheating, both being accused of dumping each other for someone else or of being jealous of each other's success… nobody wanted to believe them when they said it was amicable… it was horrible. My son was in meltdown, Piper was in meltdown, I was in meltdown for both of them and on my own behalf because I'd been counting on her as a daughter in law… it was not a fun time."

To add to the betrayal of the story being leaked, Piper then faced yet another story being told to the tabloids - although this one had a little less truth to it.

Wade

"Scott was an ex boyfriend of Piper's. Who had cheated on her and got his ass dumped, which I practically threw a party to celebrate at the time because I really didn't like him. Anyway, after her and Justin broke up he went to the tabloids and claimed she'd been cheating on Justin with him. Backstage at her charity function for her Dad, which God only knows Piper would NEVER do anything like that, especially when it was for her father. And since then he's got himself on reality TV shows on the back of it and then jobs as a presenter from that and has basically made a career out of telling lies about Piper."

Justin

"Even if I hadn't known it was a lie because I was with her every second of the night in question, anybody who knows her knows that whoever he was describing was not Piper Tenshaw. I never believed him, not for a second. Asshole."

Piper

"It was betrayal in the worst way. And pretty damn rich considering he'd got his ass dumped for cheating on me, for him to then go making money off of me cashing in on my new relationship…eh. It bothered me at the time, but now I'm just like eh, whatever. I married Justin Timberlake, I so traded up!"

Regardless of her heartbreak, Piper still had commitments to keep and concerts to perform. Despite the end of her three year relationship, she didn't miss a beat.

Maggie

"The show must go on. There's big bucks riding on these tours and they stop for nobody. Not that I think Piper for a second would have wanted it to stop. She wouldn't want to let anybody down, especially not her fans, and I think that was how she dealt with it, like, if her schedule had cost her a relationship then she was going to fulfil that schedule the best way she could, at least make it worth it."

Piper

"I don't know how to deal with things other than to dance them out or write them out, so that's what I did. Being on stage was like a drug, I could just get lost in the moment and I didn't have to think about Justin or how tired I was or anything like that. I spent my spare time writing songs, some of which ended up on my album, some of which ended up on other people's albums, and it was a cathartic thing for me. I kind of put on my game face in public and let it all out in the songs when nobody was watching."

Wade

"It's just how she deals with things, she's a workaholic. The one thing I never saw get affected was just the quality of the performance. Her voice never wavered; she was still giving these routines her all… I might not hear a word out of her all day, but she still put on a hell of a show each night."

Piper

"In retrospect… it wasn't healthy. I stopped dealing with the outside world and became a machine, because everybody on the outside world was reminding me Justin was gone. And not just Justin, it was Joey and the guys too because *NSYNC are kind of a package deal, and I felt like I'd lost five in one shot, a little. I didn't realise how much of my life was shared with Justin until he was gone and those parts kind of went with him."

Joey Fatone, *NSYNC member

"We missed her. We couldn't really say it to Justin because obviously what we were feeling didn't even… I mean, of course it can't even begin to compare, but she was our friend too and we were used to talking to her almost as much as he did and it was weird. Whole thing was just really awkward."

Lynn Harless

"You know, like I said, I was counting on her being my daughter in law someday. And lucky for all of us that still worked out in the end but at the time it was horrible. We all missed her, all of us, because we had all become one big family, you know, and suddenly I didn't feel right calling her mom any more and Piper used to still call me once in a while but it would be strained because we were trying to avoid talking about it. And as much as of course I understood what my son was going through and why he did what he did and I supported him 100%, it just was hard, for all of us."

Finally, after a year of non stop touring, Piper ended the Enter The Circus tour in Houston, Texas. She immediately withdrew to finish writing her third studio album, to be called Flirtation. She all but disappeared for the next few months, working with renowned producer Timbaland, and rarely emerged in public, although when she did the gossip columns immediately set back in motion.

Lance Bass, *NSYNC member

"She's young and beautiful and famous, of course they love to talk about her all the time."

Justin, Ellen March 2005

"Oh that Matt Damon rumour. That was not fun for me. Last thing you need to hear when you're broken hearted is debates on your ex girlfriend's possible new guy and whether she's traded up."

Piper

"I stood next to the guy at a film premiere and posed for a picture. How they got hot and heavy romance out of that I don't know, but it was ridiculous because I barely even introduced myself to him. It was just more gossip I didn't need, as if they weren't still going on and on about me and Justin and like 'The War Is On' and 'Are They Back Together' and all that crap. Man, how many times in this interview am I going to describe the press as ridiculous?"