Let's Talk About X

If you told me I’d end up getting thrown out by bouncers, I wouldn’t have believed you……..

“Hello, Dublin! Make some NOISE! Arms in the air! Everybody scream!” booms an English male over the sound system. It’s 9a.m. I’m tempted to start into the vodka I brought, but realise that rationing it will enable me survive the day. No-one else seems to be drinking.
“Oh Dublin, you’re so good, you are the best city we have ever been to…” – that old line. “…look at the camera! With passion! Are you happy? Is everyone excited? Dublin’s got the X Factor! Scream like mentalists!” This to the thumping beat of you gotta fight fight fight fight fight for your love….
Perhaps everyone else got drunk before they came.
“Simon said we’d never be back – I’m sure there’s one or two people here who’d like to prove him wrong…”
The boom camera into which we’re to unleash our inner extroverts sweeps across the fashion casualties as we file into Croke Park’s X Factor audition. As into a reverse asylum, we’ve to convince authorities we’re happy in order to enter.
“Let’s have a big boo for Simon… pretend he’s said something bad about Ireland… there’s a surprise we’re going to tell you about later… in the meantime, let’s all go absolutely loopy loo…”
We get treated to a crowd surfing leprechaun. “Carry him all the way back… you can’t drop him….” You’re hot and you’re cold, you’re yes and you’re no, you’re in and you’re out, you’re up and you’re down….
The leprechaun disappears.
Last time I was a movie extra, I got paid.
We file, over a number of hours, forward into the stadium, through the ambient music of auditions in progress; many of us humming or singing softly off lyric sheets. Some young girls in tight whites and cut-off denims behind me mock the quiet scales I am humming. If we were at an athletic meet, would they mock me for doing a few stretches? Probably.
“You’ll be given an X Factor number… a producer from the show will be in the booth… you’ll just be told ‘yes’ or ‘no’…. if it’s a ‘yes’, follow the sign that says ‘yes’. If it’s a ‘no’, follow the signs that say ‘exit’... you may also be directed into the ‘Pod’ to do some pieces to camera…” Barely believably, out of the 30 rows of seats, I‘m seated in row X. “You will be asked to leave if you are caught smoking…” What? Even though, there are no walls or ceiling, and the wind is having its way with everybody’s ‘do – even though we’re outside. The open tarpaulin booths are at the edge of the football pitch. It’s hard to imagine a more hostile auditioning environment – except, perhaps, at the edge of an equally large or larger field allotted to rugby.
The crowd cheers those who get through... avatars of all hope. Most of the successful girls express their happiness by crying. Even if I do make it into the ‘Pod’, which I won’t, I’m sure I won’t be deemed young, cute, or ridiculous looking enough to proceed. But here’s the X Factor thing – even in half a portakabin at the edge of a football pitch, you never know the moment that all your moments may choose to arrive. If I get a yellow ticket, I shall dash out to the kickoff point and roll around it as lasciviously as Shakira might high on Redbull, Viagra, Ketamine, bathsalts and plantgrowth hormone.
In the terraces, participants with guitars exhibit the sensible side of things with Oasis and Blur singalong covers. Wandering the park’s interior I watch other hopefuls singing into concrete corners or stairwells, or straight into friends’ faces – bodies vibrating, giving all to a wall, stairwell etc, giving it every single thing that they’ve got.
“Robert Shipley Davies, make yourself known your mother is here to collect you...”
As I shuffle down to the audition tarpaulin I feel I’m following exit signs already... But this is not what transpires. I do my thing and the word comes down. I am through, or so it becomes clear as I am followed out of the stadium by producers telling me to come back for second round auditions next day... I wouldn’t have believed it... not as I opened my mouth to sing, not as I was told, and had to have repeated to me, that I’d gotten through; only barely beginning to believe it as, snatching my golden yes from the producer’s hand, I turned and faced the pitch’s wide and ever widening sward. I was through. For one night at least I was able to dream...