Keeley Bolger - Fame: At Any Cost

Copyright 2010 Omnibus Press
This edition 2011 Omnibus Press
(A Division of Music Sales Limited, 14-15 Berners Street, London W1T 3LJ)

ISBN: 978-0-85712-593-4

Cover designed by Fresh Lemon
Picture research by Jacqui Black

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Thanks to everyone who has been interviewed for this book. Massive thanks are also due to Joe Minihane, Elaine, Ady, Shelley and Hannah Bolger, Ethan Ashbolt, the Arch family and the Minihane/Parkin family for all their love, encouragement and patience (especially with me banging on about this book for months).

T he winner takes it all, the loser standing small, sang ABBA in 1980. How little the Super Troupers knew. For just 20 years later the supposed losers of reality TV shows would be cropping up and trouncing those whod originally won the same competition theyd fought tooth and nail to win.

Winning might mean everything on a TV talent show but out in the world of the charts it means little more than the expectation that youll dash out a Gary Wilmot cover and then fade faster than a polar bear in a blizzard. The only compensation is that people may remember that once upon a time you won a series of that show on the telly', you know the one with the judges and the drawn out elimination rounds, and theyll probably tell you that they expected youd fail anyway. Cue a Nelson Muntz from The Simpsons ha ha in your face. Lucky you.

It could go big for you, really big, but if it slips slightly then youre a failure. Nah. Winning is not where its at. If you want a longer career in music, go for second or even better, third place. Without the pressure of expectations and cheesy first video to record, youll be free to reap all the riches of winning and sing whatever you see fit.

But what is it about winning that bites the singer on the bottom once in the charts? Do runners up try harder? Do we inherently prefer underdogs? Lets take a look.

T heres a lot to be said for feckless grammar. The members of HearSay might have been too busy working on their silky tones at school to learn much about the correct use of apostrophes in the English language but their boo-boo won them an unlikely adversary in bestselling writer and punctuation authority Lynne Truss.

That greengrocers apostrophe lumped between the Hear and Say of their band name was a sticking point for the Eats, Shoots And Leaves author who declared that the unsought apostrophe was hanging there in eternal meaninglessness and was a significant milestone on the road to punctuation anarchy.

While the linguistic blip might have brought the world of punctuation marks out into the limelight indeed rarely does a day go by without a shower of exclamation marks raining down over the internet and causing much tut-tutting aggravation its easy to forget that before this fresh-faced bunch found themselves in Ms Truss bad books for not obeying grammatical laws, they were the bright young things whose stories and ascent to fame had us gripped.

Things started so promisingly for HearSay. Back in 2001, they were pipped for great things. All the ingredients were there; deftly handed a song that was co-written by the sublime Betty Boo (tick) and then songwriting and production team Jiant (tick); a throng of supporters gained from Popstars, the ITV show that gave birth to them (tick); chirpy band members who fizzled with excitement at being chosen for the group (tick); and the type of media coverage that most new bands would give their grans for (tick, tick, tick).

Whizz that all together and youd be forgiven for thinking that a few years down the line HearSay would have plummy roles as judges on talent TV shows (reality TV circle completed), their expansive back catalogue covered by other pop stars, and be called upon to lend their faces and voices to benefit events for natural disasters organised by St. Bono and Archbishop Geldof.

Unfortunately, things didnt turn out that way at all for the newly famous five: Kym Marsh, Myleene Klass, Noel Sullivan, Danny Foster and Suzanne Shaw. But back at the start of Popstars, at the turn of the century, things looked a whole lot peachier. Back then, they werent a band in the chart who took a maverick approach to the use of apostrophes, the bounders, back then they were just like us.

By virtue of this, those five boys and girls and their fellow aspiring singers showed the world that the seemingly impossible could be made possible; that pop stars who were really just people like us with jobs like ours, families like ours and high street clobber like ours, could be discovered and morphed into superdooperstars on a TV show.

They could be as unashamedly excited, as we might be, and scream down their clunky mobile phones (it was the turn of the century) to their mums, shrieking that theyd made it and werent all those hours in front of the hallway mirror practising Bananarama routines worth it now, hasnt it borne fruit? And we could watch it all happen.

Tony Lundon was a member of the successful pop group Liberty X, formed of the five finalists who werent chosen for HearSay. Tony reckons that although Popstars and the talent shows that followed it may be criticised for giving aspiring singers a platform to achieve their ambitions, or knocking them out through the rounds and broadcasting it, they are nevertheless important in fulfilling viewers desires to see those dreams come true. Because, well, it is entertaining.

Popstars was a fully pre-recorded, fly-on-the-wall factual entertainment series, says Tony. Reality talent shows have evolved from Popstars into the Saturday night live TV mega-show you see currently.

I enjoy The X Factor, but I have issues with it. There is too much airtime given over to contestants sob stories, there is definitely something morally wrong about making fun, nationally, of the intellectually challenged, and it certainly feeds into young peoples expectations of Fame, NOW. But God, is it entertaining.

Tonys view of The X Factor making entertaining telly is shared by the 15m people who watch it week after week and the same can be said for Popstars back at the start of the Noughties. The format may have evolved but the genre is as popular as ever. It does make good telly and, handily, it also makes good business sense. Its the ultimate in music marketing: make a TV show about people who want to become singers, crown one or one act the winner, give them a song that will appeal to as many of that audience as possible, then bring out that single and watch it fly up the charts. Wham, bam, thank you maam.