How Not To Be A Pop Star

How Not To Be A Pop Star



It was a twelve- hour journey by bus to get to London, from the
sprawling metropolis of Aberdeen. I knew it was going to be one of them
days when part of my guitar case came whizzing past my ear as the bus
driver shoved my guitar in the boot. Of course, I resisted the desire
to scream at the nice man and instead proceeded to bite the tip of my
tongue. Being a little short of funds I had taken a drastic step of
inviting my mother to accompany me on the trip. This meant I would be
dragged round all the boring bits of London, but the whole journey
would cost me nothing. The journey was long, and by the time we arrived
there was no denying it, yes, the man in front of us on the bus had
definitely forgot to put on deodorant that day.


After a short journey on the underground to get to
Hammersmith we arrived in the hotel, which was very pleasant indeed.
Never in my life had I seen such a large hotel before, and I was really
excited about the impending audition. I had thought of everything or at
least my mother had thought of everything. We had the whole night to
wind down and just relax before the audition at 11am, so we had a drink
or two in the hotel bar. Perhaps, I had one too many.


That is where things started to go a little pear shaped
because while there my mother noticed the rather large group of people
at the bar enjoying a drink. She quickly pointed out that they looked
scruffy and, as always, she did it in such a way that they could not
help but over hear her comments. As things turned out the gentleman
concerned was one of the producers of the show, as I found out the next
day. It would not have been so bad if he hadn't turned round and looked
at me just as I agreed with her, just to appease her without thinking.
Unfortunately, I think he heard me and had taken a mental note of what
I looked like for future reference. I would like to point out that I
thought he was rather stylishly dressed, not scruffy at all. I am not
in control of what I say in the presence of my mother, I am merely her
puppet when in her company. She has the money and therefore, I have the
time to spend it.


Oh well, I could have survived if that had been the end of my
bad luck but it seemed the poor hygiene on the bus and nerves had
affected me, and the next day I was very ill. Or, it may be possible
that the wine affected me, but I prefer the bus theory. I could not
stay away from the toilet for longer than five minutes at a time. This
in turn made me very dehydrated, and as all singers will tell you this
is not good, especially when you have an audition. Not good for the
voice at all! Makes you sounds all crackly like a crow on LSD. I had
avoided eating breakfast just to be safe, and had planned to eat
afterwards. I mean how long could it take? Surely no longer than an
hour, I thought. Well, I thought wrong, it took over three hours before
I got seen.


Let me remind you of what that entails. That is three hours
of dying of the toilet but too afraid to go in case you cannot get off
the loo in time and miss your chance to shine. Plus I was dehydrated,
starving, having a nervous breakdown, and really wanted to warm up the
old vocal chords, if only the woman with the camera would go away and
let me have a moment of privacy. Guess I forgot that being in a reality
television show meant being filmed all the time, so there was not going
to be an opportunity to sing without being filmed. I desperately wanted
to check I still had a voice, but the moment I was waiting for never
arrived. And so, I got more and more unnerved about the whole thing as
time passed. They kept asking me why I thought I should win, so I
squinted at the camera like a naughty school girl caught stealing the
teacher's favourite red pen, and said "errr, uhmm?cos I love music
?err?" and then I added the dumbest sentence ever "please pick me."
This was ironic because as soon as I got out of the diary room I heard
a guy being filmed saying the exact same phrase. Doh!


How unoriginal of me. I should have been able to think of
something better than that surely, but no, words had failed me. All I
had in my head at the time was a line from Hamlet "Sweet dreams sweet
Prince", and would have looked like a lunatic if I had spouted forth
that without any warning, or maybe not, it would have been an original
answer to the question, if nothing else. Hmm..


As for the audition itself, I wish I had ran out of the room
screaming instead of singing, because when I opened my mouth I realised
I had started on the wrong note then I made a worse discovery, I had
forgotten the melody of the song I was currently singing. How Strange!
I had learned the song, and sang it beautifully a day ago, but on that
particular day the song escaped me, as if I had never known it. I could
not hide my horror, and I could feel my face contorting as I sang. I
dread to think how the whole affair looks on film, because I nearly had
a heart attack when I saw the female judge's face drop in disgust at my
performance. Okay, the next bit should have been easy, I thought I
could redeem myself when talking about my personal object, if only I
had remembered to bring it with me. All I had with me was my driving
licence that I had brought up by accident. I had to improvise and tell
them about my driving test, but that story which I knew so well
stumbled out of my mouth, and somehow the words landed all mixed up. I
am not going to tell you the story, but I will tell you it involved me
being soaked in petrol on the day of my driving test, and yes, I did
pass my test that day. The judges must have thought I had a few screws
loose and I was quickly, but politely, dismissed.


There was a short gap, and then we were called back in to the
room to hear the verdict. There was no point in me being there I knew I
was not going to be called back, and I was right. No big surprise
there. Still, there is always next year!