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Celebrity Status Hasn't Hurt The Ordinary Boys
By Phil Crossey

Friday 17th March 2006

THE most entertaining moment that the Celebrity Big Brother cameras didn't catch was when Sam Preston from the Ordinary Boys told the rest of the band he was going to appear on reality TV.

They reportedly called him an idiot. Had I been there, I would have probably echoed that sentiment and added a few expletives for effect.

It would have drowned out the flushing sound as the band's hard-earned credibility went down the toilet.

But go on Big Brother he did, much to the puzzlement of fans (who wondered what he was doing) and to the nation (who wondered how exactly he warranted the title celebrity).

The Ordinary Boys began life as a hardcore band in Brighton, with a not inconsiderable fanbase whose loyalty was strong enough to sustain them. Then they changed direction and caught the new wave of British guitar bands. Not that this was a bad thing; their songs were a cut above their contemporaries and the Ordinary Boys were an infinitely more appealing prospect than, say, the Kaiser Chiefs or Razorlight.

What's more, the hardcore fanbase, who frown on such things as drinking, eating fast food or buying a slightly more commercial brand of bass strings, stayed with them.

It's normally a cardinal sin for such bands to switch genres, especially when the move could be taken as a desire to make more money.

But the Ordinary Boys managed to carry off this almost impossible feat and gained themselves an unlikely cache in the process.

The fact that they got away with it may have fuelled a penchant for testing their audience.

However, while the lustre may have gone from their status as an exciting new band over the past two years and their contemporaries had begun to overtake them, allowing yourself to be tried in the court of reality television is a gamble too far.

The problem with the vast majority of music stars is that, while they're fine on stage, they don't come across too well on television.

It's such an honest medium that a person's flaws, and your average singing sensation has more than a few of those, are up on screen for everyone to see. Every inarticulate musing, nervous twitch and blank expression is beamed into the nation's living rooms.

It's even worse on reality television, which hunts out and exploits people's failings in a manner not dissimilar to a 19th century freak show.

Certainly, if an artist wanted to pull off the ultimate escapology act in credibility terms, going on Celebrity Big Brother and emerging intact would be it. Reality TV is normally an act of desperation undertaken by celebrities whose careers have hit such depths that they are contemplating creative suicide. While this might be great fun in the Osbournes, with Ozzy's unimpeachable reputation allowing him to do virtually anything, it's not so good for lesser mortals.

And it's not as if Ozzy has any soulful ballads that are going to be undermined by the sight of him picking his nose with a pencil.

Maggot from Goldie Lookin' Chain probably thought he was similarly immune when he signed up for Big Brother but, what with the band being dropped by their record label last week, it's hard to be a winner when the cameras are turned off.

Most fly-on-the-wall documentaries have some element of record label control so that their acts don't come out looking like the idiots they are, but Big Brother is a free-for-all.

It is a TV show designed to embarrass celebrities by putting them in the most mundane situation possible and occasionally asking them to perform demeaning tasks.

If these people were animals, the Big Brother set would have been torn down by protestors some considerable time ago.

And it's not as if Preston was unaware of the world he was entering.

He didn't help his case by spending most of his time with Chantelle, who seems to have set out her stall as some kind of semi-professional ignoramus. Having yourself forever married in the public psyche to a woman who is in the dictionary beside the word 'pointless' can't be a good thing.

But, on emerging from the Big Brother house, the Ordinary Boys saw a surge in sales and an expanded fanbase drawn from TV viewers.

Though, as comedian Emo Phillips said after appearing on Richard and Judy: "It was great! I really want to appeal to the kind of people who are house-bound at 4.30 on a Friday afternoon." Richard and Judy is exactly the kind of show Preston is appearing on, having gone from alternative hero to mainstream couch fodder, and the band's audience has adjusted its demographic accordingly.

Preston is now a pin-up for the generation who like their popular culture mashed up and spoon-fed to them.

Still, they're doing well in terms of sales. And they got a pretty good deal for selling their souls.

It's not that the tunes which were great a few years ago suddenly lost their value - the Ordinary Boys are still a good band - it's just that they haven't added anything with the backdrop of desperation.

The Ordinary Boys perform at the Mandela Hall, Belfast, tonight, tickets cost £13.50.

p.crossey@newsletter.co.uk

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/story/26655/2/