I have found my route to TV stardom. Celebrity will not, as I’d conceitedly pondered on idle hangovers, come knocking in a few years’ time with me squeezed between Grace Dent and Tom Parker-Bowles, muttering unprintable things about Gregg Wallace while a skittish chef worries nearby. Instead, I’m going to hit the big time sooner rather than later as part of Sky Arts’ new “reverse X-Factor”, Anyone Can Sing!
Anybody cannot sing. I cannot sing (once, as a guitarist on a gig, midway through a song a roadie removed the mic I was blurting backing vocals into, and got a thumbs-up from the drummer). My mother cannot sing. My closest friends, they cannot sing. Considering it for this column, I know so many people who can’t carry a tune, I’m beginning to wonder if subconsciously I’ve made it a prerequisite for friendship. But then, it’s not so easy: even our biggest pop stars lean on lip-syncing live and auto-tune in the studio.
On the other hand, it does at least mean my lot can make it on the box. The show sounds a good’un: Sky Arts and the English National Opera are looking for the nation’s banshees, howlers and caterwaulers — your neighbour, when you’re not sure whether they’re having sex or shrieking to Dua Lipa — to be trained by the ENO’s world-class voice coaches and mentors. In three months, the kindly, misguided ENO says, they’ll prove they can transform any old screecher into a songbird — and the nation is kindly invited to watch.
Sky Arts director Phil Edgar-Jones apparently came up with the show after the ENO told him they could tune him up from a tone-deaf yelper to someone good enough to get on their stage. Edgar-Jones was sceptical. I can’t find any evidence he did try it out but I suspect, even if he did and was proved right, the programme would still be going ahead.
The good old British public love a little nationally-broadcast humiliation; we won’t be watching to see if the ENO can do it, we’ll be gleefully pointing and laughing when they can’t. Tune in — and next time next door complain about the shower singalong, blame the TV.
Would you try out for Anyone Can Sing? Let us know in the comments below.
