Hello everyone, I’m Trevor Weekend and on the day after the final of Britain’s Got Talent, I am about to reveal to you all the inside track of the talent show phenomenon.
We have all witnessed the acts that made it through to television, we have all heard their stories and we have listened as they explained how they have put in the, allegedly, hours of training to perfect their craft but what about the other acts? Those not lucky enough or deemed interesting enough to make it onto television? That is what I set off to find out about as I went under cover to the audition rounds of Britain’s favourite talent show.
Britain’s Got Talent is well known for its security, only those cleared by ITV may enter the inner sanctum of where the recordings take place, so I needed a well though out plan to get past the burly security guards. Initially, I thought I’d pretend to be Simon Cowell until somebody kindly reminded me that he wasn’t going to be present at the early rounds and he was going to make a dramatic entrance like some kind of judging demi-God in the semi-finals so that put paid to that idea. I decided to do “a Mourinho” and sneaked in inside a picnic hamper. I chose Amanda Holden’s basket because I new that would contain the least amount of food and would, therefore, sneak me inside much easier.
I got inside the building and started to have a quick look around, disappointingly, I did not see Ant and Dec so I cannot confirm whether it is in fact just one person and a ventriloquist’s dummy, nor do I see David “The Hoff” Hasselhoff so I am unable to state whether or not he is the world’s coolest human being, but, I did see Michael McIntyre and, yes, his hair is a magnificent sight. I started to look for some of the auditionees. I saw the usual collection of dancers, singers who were not good enough to get on the X-Factor, impressionists (apparently), magicians and, of course, people using their pets as props. The first audiotionees I interviewed were a dance group called “Activ-8”. The y had just been informed that they would not be making it through to the televised round so wouldn’t get to see their heroes. I spoke with their leader, Candice, and this is what she told me.
“Nah! We’re well bad gutted, you know what I mean? I mean we had it all figured out. The name was banging, man, Activ-8 because there were seven of us we thought it was dead clever. We busted some proper shapes out there. We reckon the woman judging us was jealous ‘cos she can’t move like us. I mean, so what if we fell over a few times? Chantelle was pissed so it’s obvious we won’t be able to do every move but she should have let us do our grand finale.” I asked what the grand finale was but I’m afraid I cannot publish the answer because this is a family website.
The next person I spoke to was an elderly gentleman who went by the name of Albert Jedderton. He too had failed to make it to the televised round and this is his story.
“Well I’m disappointed to be honest. I don’t know what you have to do to be on television nowadays. I thought my act was a shoo-in, after all, what can be better than settling down and listening to a man recite his top ten favourite dominoes matches in his local pub league? I suppose people just want vulgarity now but I offered to recite the matches wearing nothing but a sparkly purple thong but the lady judging me left the room gagging without giving me an answer. Happen she came down with something so she will probably come back later with an answer so I’ll stick around for another hour or two.”
The final people I interviewed were a couple who went by the name of Edward and Josephine Smith. Their act was rejected by the pre-television judge. They were disconsolate but they managed to tell me their tale in between outbreaks of uncontrollable sobbing.
“It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? We just can’t believe it. What does one have to do to win this thing? We thought we had it all. We’ve got acting talent, we can sing and dance. We can do anything the judging panel want us to do but they still rejected us.”
I asked them what their act was and Mrs Smith replied with. “We acted out our favourite dinnertime, it was Thursday 26th June 1997, and we had chips, fish fingers and peas. It was cooked beautifully. I just cannot believe they would let us through.”
Mr and Mrs Smith walked off sobbing leaving me to think about the acts who had failed to make it through to the televised round, all those dreams turned to dust, and I wondered whether it was really worth it. Should we really be building up the hopes of these, clearly deluded, individuals only to knock them back down again? Of course we should. These people need to know that they have no actual talent to speak of and the programme is called Britain’s Got Talent.
