Every Sunday evening, the Murs family would gather excitedly round the radio, listening to the newly unveiled Top 40 singles chart. ‘Sunday nights was like my equivalent of a Friday night now,’ said Olly. ‘I used to love Sunday nights, even though I used to go to school the next day and I used to dread it.’ Michael Jackson, who was ever-present in the charts in the 1980s and 1990s, was a special favourite of all the kids.
Yet the charts of the 1990s had very few solo pop idols, at least in Britain. The Britpop boom in the middle of the decade was all about groups, not soloists – Blur, Pulp, Oasis, Supergrass, etc. And in mainstream pop that appealed to the very young, the vocal group held sway, especially boy bands from both sides of the Atlantic – New Kids on the Block, Take That, Boyzone, N*Sync, the Backstreet Boys, Five and, eventually, in 1999, Westlife. Add to that a couple of girl-group sensations in The Spice Girls and All Saints and it seemed like there were no solo singers around for Olly Murs to identify with. The only emerging solo superstar seemed to be Robbie Williams and even he had come from boy band Take That.
Not that that stopped Olly from loving Five and the Backstreet Boys or, for that matter, The Spice Girls. He had also idolised Justin Timberlake and Michael Jackson, before visits to festivals in his early adulthood started to broaden his tastes. ‘I used to like a lot of pop bands, like boy bands, and Coldplay were the first band that I got into that made me a bit more credible. Coldplay sort of opened up to me the indie kind of vibe while still being poppy.’ From that stepping stone, Olly started to delve into his dad’s capacious, wide-ranging record collection, finding particular pleasure in the likes of 1970s icons like David Bowie and T. Rex’s Marc Bolan, or British ska of the early 1980s like Madness and The Specials. It was a turning point. Olly did not turn his back on pop but began to embrace other types of music too.
In 2000, when ITV bought the format of a show called Popstars (which had been popular in Australia and New Zealand), its aim was to form and launch a new group on the British pop scene, with the help of a panel. Some of the panel would be nice, others not so nice. Simon Cowell, heavily involved in launching Westlife (managed by Louis Walsh), was asked to take part as the panel’s Mr. Nasty. He said no, and a producer and former choreographer called Nigel Lythgoe took his place. Imagine Cowell’s horror when the series turned out to be the TV hit of early 2001. The finished group, a quintet called Hear’Say, raced to number one, selling half a million copies of their debut single in just one week. In the group’s ranks were Kym Marsh (now of Coronation Street) and the future TV presenter Myleene Klass.
Within a year, Cowell was persuaded to join the show when the format was rejigged to launch a solo star. But what really annoyed him about his involvement in Pop Idol, apart from Will Young beating his favoured protégé Gareth Gates to the title, was that he did not own the series format. ‘My competitors had the recording rights,’ he said, ‘and it was actually making me feel sick.’ It was this frustration which led to him approaching ITV with a new idea in early 2004. He craved more creative control and, with The X Factor, he got that. He also made sure that the judging panel had to do something themselves and so a panel of mentors was introduced.
The X Factor would bring together many facets from the talent shows of old. The viewing public would have the final say, but not before a panel of judges (some ‘nice’, some ‘nasty’) could sound off. Eliminating contestants each week was a feature shared with the reality-TV sensation Big Brother. Like Stars in Their Eyes, it would showcase talented singers covering familiar songs but here, these existed to see if a singer was infusing the song with enough of their own identity, to see if they would be able to make it after the series was over, with specially written and unknown material. Lastly, like Popstars and Pop Idol, but unlike the talent shows of old, The X Factor would televise the backstage audition process, in which both the prodigious and the sadly hopeless would be seen valiantly battling it out for the judges’ attention. This feature of the show, so often criticised as exploitative and cruel for placing the spotlight on the deluded and even vulnerable, would nevertheless be enormously popular with the viewing public. Even a bad act could be compulsive viewing for 30 seconds – if only because it caught people’s attention, unable to believe what they were watching.
Ultimately, though, the point of The X Factor (like all its predecessors) was to find a talent and a long-term star. Cowell did not want to uncover an able musical performer who then preferred to stay in the background songwriting (as had happened with David Sneddon, who had won the BBC’s talent search, Fame Academy, in 2002). Cowell wanted someone who yearned for the fame and who was prepared to work hard for that exposure, and who could convey a charismatic personality which could charm the viewing public. It was hard to know why someone might have the ‘X Factor’ – that mystery ingredient – but he remained determined to hunt it down.
The first five series of The X Factor found great talent in its winning acts, notably in Leona Lewis and Alexandra Burke, both performers with exceptional vocal prowess. But by the sixth series in 2009, it became clear that someone was needed who might not have the most flawless vocal talent but could engage with the audience nonetheless. Could Simon Cowell have finally found someone in that vein? Enter Oliver Stanley Murs.
Though Olly Murs loved singing and dancing at an early age, he never thought of performing as his destiny. ‘I was always in the background. It was my brother who used to do all the singing and dancing.’ Sister Fay agreed that he was something of a dark horse. ‘He was a very different Olly to the one you see on TV. He wasn’t always the centre of attention and was certainly the quieter one.’ But while he did occasionally perform in public to a wider audience, notably in a Howbridge Junior School production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, his primary passion during his youth and early adulthood was football.
Ben, Olly’s younger twin, also enjoyed football and later said of their fraternal relationship, ‘We were inseparable. Even though I’m ten minutes younger, I always felt like his big brother. If someone was being rough with him on the pitch, I’d sort it out.’ The two clashed from time to time as youngsters but rancour would always be short-lived. ‘Me and Ben were always close,’ Olly told ITV2 in 2010. ‘Two peas in a pod. If we ever had a row with each other, it never lasted more than three or four hours. Within an hour we’d be back, playing our computer games together.’
As a spectator, Olly’s first big football match took place at Wembley Stadium in March 1996, just weeks away from his 12th birthday. A few months before England hosted the UEFA Euro ’96 tournament, it was a friendly between England and Bulgaria. Olly was becoming a promising player at his new secondary school, Notley High in Braintree, which previously educated such notables as Leeroy Thornhill, keyboard player with rave pioneers The Prodigy, and the dancer and choreographer Louis Spence. Olly’s enthusiasm and skill for the game of football ensured that he became the centre-forward of the school side. By the time he was 15, he even had a trial for Southend United.
For some in Essex, the league team to support is Southend United, or Colchester United, or maybe a London club like West Ham United. But Olly could not resist the appeal of a club further north. As a child, worshipping the skills of players like David Beckham, Eric Cantona and Roy Keane, he was already a fan of Manchester United FC, perhaps the dominant English football team of the past 20 years. The club has won the Premiership title a total of 19 times, including 12 times since 1992, and lifted the FA Cup Final trophy on 11 occasions. They even had a number-one hit record in 1994, ‘Come On You Reds’. If pushed to nominate a second team he favours, he selects another team from the north-west of England. ‘I’d probably say Wigan. There’s something about them, they’re really hometown. They’re not vicious, they don’t cause any problems, they just go about their business. Their fans kind of applaud what other teams do.’
In his late teens, between 2001 and 2003, Olly studied sport and