[Red Moon]

Behind the scenes on X Factor

X Factor singers now dominate the charts. Our correspondent pokes around behind the scenes of TV’s star machine

I’m sitting in Cheryl Cole’s judging seat watching last year’s X Factor finalist Rhydian rehearse his song The Impossible Dream. There are coffee stains all over the judges’ desk, along with a discarded drawing of a dog with a speech bubble declaring: “I don’t like tuna.”

Since the Girls Aloud singer joined the judging panel, The X Factor has become the biggest yet. It’s now in its fifth year and last Saturday’s show, featuring a lipsynched Britney performance that kept watercoolers bubbling until Wednesday was watched by more than 11 million viewers. The show’s stranglehold on the autumn TV schedules is replicated in the pop charts: X Factor winners have bagged the past three Christmas No 1 singles, and Leona Lewis, the 2006 winner, has become a transatlantic sales phenomenon.

Tomorrow night the public will choose between four semi-finalists: the 16-year-old Eoghan Quigg, a charisma vacuum; the sparky but overrated four-piece boyband JLS; the talented but somehow rather pointless singer Alexandra Burke; and, most controversially, the barefooted, face-touching, R.E.M.-song-slaying (but totally brilliant) Diana Vickers.

Things move quickly in X Factor world: it was only two Saturdays ago, when I visited the studio to meet last year’s finalist Rhydian Roberts, that there were two more names on the list.

One was Rachel Hylton’s. “Her problem,” announced someone with a clipboard within five minutes of my arrival at the Wembley-based studio, “is that she’s got holes in her brain from all that crack.” The mouthy former cocaine addict, booted out of the show later that night, had been responsible for a genuinely touching masterclass in overcoming life’s trials, set against the show’s usual procession of attention-seeking sob stories.

Rhydian didn’t really have a sob story, he just looked a bit peculiar and belted out classical versions of pop hits. When I went to meet him on the show I found him in a beige Winnebago parked outside, next to Simon Cowell’s bullet-proof Rolls-Royce. He is sporting a sparkly, Ben Elton-style suit jacket. I’d been surprised to find out that he was only 25.

Maybe it’s his chosen field of classical singing, or his rather intense manner, but he’d always seemed as if he was in his mid-thirties. As he picks his way through an array of white shirts, choosing one for tonight’s performance, the Powys-born singer says that since getting the keys to his new home ten weeks ago he has barely set foot in the place. The fridge is bare, he says, with few personal possessions. I say that it sounds a bit sad.

Clearly, setting up home comes second when there’s an album to promote, and few promotional opportunities are bigger than The X Factor: the most powerful launchpad around. Its power has raised eyebrows in those agog at this self-perpetuating prime-time fame machine, which spews out stars at the end of one year, then gives them ten months to record an album ready to launch in the next year’s series.

Former winners, including Shayne Ward, Leona Lewis and Leon Jackson, have already appeared in the 2008 run. Raised eyebrows are irrelevant, though, because for those involved it works just fine.

Rhydian and I walked together to the studio, where I sat in Cole’s judging seat. The TV cameras make this desk look miles away from the stage but, sitting there, I felt that I could definitely throw a pen and be fairly certain of hitting Rhydian. On stage he was proving something of a distraction. He had questions about the spotlight, for example: it was too big, and he wanted it smaller. The studio was lit too brightly, he added, and it needed to be in pitch-darkness.

“*******ing hell, Rhydian,” muttered one member of the production team. “You’d think we’d know how to light a studio.” During his second run-through, Rhydian seemed to be getting angry. “The backing track is too . . . loud.” Sitting next to me, the man who has styled this performance was not impressed with what he perceived to be the singer’s diva demands. “It’s Mariah Roberts,” he noted, dismissively.

Afterwards, I mentioned to Rhydian that he seemed quite serious about all this. “You’ve probably caught me on the biggest day, musically, of my life,” he smiled. “If I do well it’s ‘hey ho’, and we move on to the next album. If I ******* this up it’s end of contract.”

Had it been explained in such blunt terms? “Oh, I know,” he shrugged. “You just know.”

Before Rhydian went on stage for the live performance I spent time in his Winnebago, where he was trying to relax with his parents. Except that he didn’t seem very relaxed. Meanwhile, in the studio, Louis Walsh had reduced his fellow judge Dannii Minogue to tears. By 9pm Rhydian was warming up his voice and millions of viewers were phoning in their votes.

The votes are compiled in a room that, one member of the production team explained, contains only three people. I tried to get in but it was impossible without a security code, so I went off in search of Rhydian. I found him emerging from Simon Cowell’s dressing room. He seemed happy.

“I read him well,” Rhydian said. “I know what he likes. It’s all about being able to turn it in when it matters. He’s not actually that hard to please — people think he is, but if you keep it simple and effective he’s fine.”

Then it was my turn to be ushered into Cowell’s dressing room. Cheryl Cole walked in and Simon introduced us, but Cheryl had already recognised me as she and I have a history of being behind the scenes at these reality pop shows. We first met six years ago during Popstars: The Rivals, when I visited the house occupied by the various girls who would eventually be whittled down into Girls Aloud. Back then Cheryl was vacuuming the stairs. Now, as an X Factor judge and one of the most famous women in Britain, her reinvention is complete.

I didn’t tell Cowell that ten minutes ago I had been shown around his Rolls-Royce, fiddling with buttons and switches like a teenage competition winner. Instead I asked what sort of pep-talk he gave Rhydian to cheer the singer up so much. “Well, I think he’s going to prove something tonight,” Cowell announced, “which is that he should have won.”

For those unfamiliar with The X Factor, the significance of this statement is that last year Roberts lost out to Leon Jackson, a likeable but ultimately useless singer whose recent big launch single was beaten in the charts by a spoof reality winner called Geraldine McQueen — Peter Kay in a wig.

Jackson and Roberts are both signed to Cowell’s label so the impresario wins either way, but it seemed that Cowell’s affections had already moved on from the official winner. “I know I’m not supposed to say Rhydian should have won but it’s true,” he shrugged. “I believe that 100 per cent.”

Support for Rhydian was certainly less forthcoming last year, when he was portrayed as an oddity and, in one absurd incident, appeared on stage dressed as a sailor performing the Village People’s Go West. But while his early appearances might have been a joke, now he has an album, co-produced by Desmond Child, mastermind of Aerosmith and Bon Jovi. Nobody is laughing any more.

During his live performance Rhydian endured the production team’s preferred spotlight size but hit his notes and received a standing ovation. Backstage, I found George Sampson, the winner of Britain’s Got Talent, in the green room. Sampson didn’t win The X Factor but he knows what it’s like to win a Simon Cowell reality show.

At 15, he already had this to say about the precarious nature of those who build a career on reality TV exposure: “When you win one of these things you’re just another one on their list who’s going to make them a bit of money. The thing is, you just don’t complain. If you give grief they’ll drop you and they don’t care, because they’ve got another 12 people lined up.”

Caught up in the moment, I agreed to join George on a private jet as it flew around the UK two days later, promoting his new single, Get Up on the Dance Floor. In the circumstances it seemed perfectly sensible because outside it was reality-pop pandemonium. Same Difference, also runners-up last year and also back to perform their new single, had burst into tears.

I tried to talk to the sister and friends of this year’s best remaining contestant, Diana Vickers, but they were not allowed to talk to me without permission from The X Factor’s PR. Vickers herself was over the other side of the room, mortified that her mum was making Sampson sign a succession of Christmas cards. A gift had been delivered to reception for Dannii Minogue: a stuffed dog in a tartan hat.

After being thrown out of Minogue’s dressing room for attempting to steal a teapot, I chatted with Same Difference, who shared a house with Rhydian during last year’s X Factor. I asked them what he was like to live with. “Incredibly honest,” Sarah Smith from the band said. “We came off stage one week and everyone was going: ‘You were great!’ Rhydian just came up to us and went: ‘Well, I thought you had a few tuning issues’.”

I didn’t end up flying around the UK with George Sampson but things turned out well for Rhydian, whose album entered the charts at No 3 in a strong pre-Christmas sales week and will still be in the Top Ten this Sunday. In the singles chart Hero, the single released last month featuring all the X Factor finalists, is still selling well, while Leona Lewis will be this Sunday’s No 1 artist with a song that has now become the fastest selling digital download. William Hill’s odds on this year’s winner having the Christmas No 1 are 1-3.

Source: The Times

[rayheartbliss]

hmm... the winner might not be number 1 this christmas