Y1-4: The X-Factor (18/10/2014)

(Sorry for being so late with the blog posts, I have so much work for class it is very difficult to keep up-to-date. As I said, here is the post about the X-Factor experience. Hope you like it.)

On Thursday morning (Week 3), Amélie entered an online raffle done by Applause Store to win tickets for the X-Factor show two days later. She didn’t expect to win, but two hours later she got an email saying she’d won two tickets. Insane and out of the blue. So she had to find someone with whom to go to London on Saturday, but nobody who watched the X-Factor was free. I didn’t have anything to do (well, work, of course, but who cares when you can go and see a televised live show for free), so I decided after a lot of hesitation to go with her to London. The trip was an adventure. On Thursday night we bought the train tickets online so Amélie could print them the next day along with the entry tickets, and we planned it all out: food, tube, clothes, plan B, what we needed to take... The show was due to finish at around 10:30pm, so we’d have to hurry to take the last train back to Bath at 11:30pm or else we’d have to sleep in a hotel. Hoped it wouldn't reach that point.

Because we had to arrive early to queue (they gave out more tickets than places, so we’d have to get there with enough time to be able to get in), we decided to take the first train, which left from Bath Spa station at 5:45am. Too early to go to the station by bus so Amélie had hired a taxi from V-Cars, due to arrive at 5:15am to the bus stop on campus. We went to sleep early on Friday and woke up at 4:30am on Saturday to get the taxi. Well, when we got there, there was no taxi. Panic started. We called V-Cars and they said the taxi had already taken its passenger, who obviously wasn’t us. They basically hung up on us while we tried to desperately ask them to send another taxi asap. After a few calls and a few times being hung up, the guy at the phone said he’d do what he could. While this happened, another taxi arrived, this time an Abbey taxi waiting for ‘Lisa’. This happened at 5:30. The taxi driver said he couldn’t take us because he had to pick Lisa up. We kept rushing V-Cars to send us another car, and after about five minutes, the Abbey taxi driver said Lisa had taken our taxi and that if we didn’t reply to V-Cars’ calls, he’d take us to the station. Whatever to get to the train on time. We jumped in and left, coming across a V-Cars taxi arriving at the same time. We ignored their calls and managed to get to the station just in time to run through to the platform and see the train arrive. Thank you Abbey Taxis, we won’t hire V-Cars ever again.

Once on the train, we got to our places in the quiet compartment and could finally relax. What a start! We tried to sleep, but couldn’t manage, so we just chilled and rested and ate something. We saw the sun rise while we arrived in Paddington station nearly two hours later. We got our Tube tickets and took the Bakerloo line to Baker Street and then changed to the Metropolitan line up to Wembley Park. For some reason, the ticket machine wouldn’t let me pay with my card, so I had to pay the fare in cash. So annoying. We reached Wembley at around 8am and bought the return tickets in case we had to run back. We used the GPS to reach Fountain Studios, which was a five-minute walk (two minute run as we found out later that day) from the station. Fairly easy to find. There were two sets of queues (the first one filled with about 20 girls which over the day turned into 40), and the security guy told us to queue at the second lot. It was a bit awkward because we were the first on the second lot so it seemed as if we were in the wrong place, but fortunately we weren’t. 

We spent over seven hours in the queue. It didn’t rain, but it did drizzle, and the morning sunny sky became cloudy soon enough. It was quite cold, but we were not alone in our torture. Frankie and Courtney were the girls right next to us (they’d been in the public the week before too), and then there were three other girls with whom we talked. Also we made friends with Simon the security guy. Basically, all we did was wait, wait, eat (we’d brought food with us), and wait a bit more. We’d brought stuff to read for class (which in the end we didn’t read) and cards. We were short on drinks as we had to run to MacDonald’s to go to the toilet and we didn’t want to miss anyone coming in in their big black tinted-window cars (not that you got to see anything, but it was funny to see the girls screaming and fangirling over them). It was a bit awkward for me because I’d never followed the show and I only knew who Simon and Cheryl were, but Amélie briefed me on everything while we waited...Thanks for that!

At around 4pm, Steven the crew guy let us into rehearsal. Apparently we were properly dressed and lucky enough to be in the last ten to get in. During the rehearsal, we were taught how to act and react during the show, how to move around for safety reasons and not block the camera, and were allowed to keep our bags (during the actual show we had to leave them in a locker). We were literally next to the stage, and had to stand up and dance all through the program. It was tiring but worth it. The judges weren’t in the rehearsal, but we got to meet the contestants as we were in the good side of the stage, where they went up and down, so we talked to them and hugged them and everything.  Same with the presenter, Dermot O’Leary. 

 

Yeah, that red arrow points at me.

After the rehearsal we had a break and were allowed to have water, go to the toilet and put our stuff in the lockers. The theme of this episode was “I Love the 80s”, week 2 of the UK series 11. The order of the contestants’ performances and songs was as follows: Jack Walton (‘Straight Up’), Stephanie Nala (‘Call Me’), Andrea Faustini (‘One Moment in Time’), Lauren Platt (‘Flashdance…What a Feeling’), Ben Haenow (‘Jealous Guy’), Fleur East (‘It’s a Shame (My Sister)’), Stereo Kicks (‘The Boys of Summer’), Lola Saunders (‘Imagine’), Jake Quickenden (‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’), Chloe Jasmine (‘Fame’), Paul Akister (‘If You Don’t Know Me By Now’), Stevi Ritchie (‘Never Gonna Give You Up’), Only The Young (‘Come On Eileen’) and Jay James (‘Im Gonna Be (500 Miles)’).

The cool thing about the show was actually seeing how it works. Because it was live, the crew was hectically setting everything into place during the ad breaks, the makeup artists re-touching the judges and contestants, the camera men moving around. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I’m glad I took the chance and decided to go. I had a lot of fun during both the rehearsal and the show itself, managing to reach the front line. I must say, that there were some bitchy girls pushing around trying to kick you out of the front to fit their friends in, but I was certainly not going to move. There was a lot of drama linked to this issue, and also tears and arguments, but the threat of actually being kicked out of the program after waiting for so long was enough to shut the girls up. I must say this was the bad side of it, the superficiality of the whole thing. We were a bit exploited to be honest.

When the judges Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh, Mel B and, specially, Cheryl Cole appeared on stage there was a lot of screaming and fangirling which I though was really funny. Again, I had a great time, it was amazing! My favourites were Lauren, Fleur, OTY and Jay James. I didn’t like Stevi or Chloe, so I wasn’t too upset when I found out the latter had got kicked out of the show the next day. I was sorry for Stephanie though, because she seemed really nice and down to earth, and she actually came and chatted with us during the rehearsal.

As the night drew on and on, we started to worry about not getting to our train on time, so we talked to Steven, the crew guy, and he said that during the last ad-break, just before everything turned to chaos when people had to leave, he’d lead us quickly out of the studio. I thank him a lot for that, because he is the reason we actually got back to Bath that night. Right when all the contestants were on-stage at the end of the show, we were running behind Steven through the VIP path and out to the courtyard to get our bags from the locker and run back to Wembley Park station. There were people and paparazzi still outside, just like it had been all day, but this time we were pumped up due to the experience we had lived so we made it in time to make the journey back home. Tube back to Paddington train station. We actually got there with enough time to buy some food (we’d been about six hours standing up and dancing without eating and barely drinking). Once we were back on the train, we ate and rested all the way back. We got the bus to get back to the campus, where we arrived at about 2am, and were as happy as a child on Christmas morning. Certainly a day to remember!