Sinitta’s connection with Simon dated back to the mid-1980s when his Fanfare record label had released her first hit, ‘So Macho’. She told the Sun she had helped him to pick Olly as one of the three Over-25s finalists. ‘We fought about Olly Murs. I knew he was a star. Simon wasn’t sure but, the more he watched him, the more he started to get the Olly Factor!’ Cowell was already convinced they had now chosen correctly. ‘Everyone loves Olly,’ he said. ‘You meet him, you like him. He has the likeability factor and he’s a natural entertainer.’
Olly may have been nervous in front of Simon and Sinitta but he’d been a sensation in front of thousands of people back in June. And that was what mattered in a pop career – engaging with large numbers confidently but being human with individuals.
Fighting against Olly for Simon’s approval in the Over-25s category (and the approval of the other three judges too) were two other male singers who had stormed through their auditions. Aged 27, Danyl Johnson, a singing teacher from Reading, delivered a version of the Beatles’ ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’, which Cowell described as the best opening audition he had ever seen. Then there was 34-year-old Jamie ‘Afro’ Archer, whose audition performance of ‘Sex on Fire’ had helped to nudge the original version by Kings of Leon back into the top 10 of the singles chart.
The other three categories already had their front-runners. Much touted in Cheryl Cole’s Boys camp was Joseph McElderry from South Shields in the north-east of England. Still just 18 years old, Joe had got as far as the bootcamp stage two years earlier in 2007 but had quit, feeling that he was too young to continue in the contest. Guiding the Girls, meanwhile, was Dannii Minogue. A strong contender there was Stacey Solomon from Dagenham in Essex. Stacey, a single mum who had just turned 20 years of age, had become the hit of bootcamp with what one newspaper summarised as a ‘soulful voice and endless legs’.
But before the live finals even got underway, there was no denying which act was attracting most attention, much of it negative. The 17-year-old Dublin twins John and Edward Grimes had already led Cowell to brand them as ‘vile, irritating creatures’ and ‘two of the most annoying people we have had on in a long time’. They were soon dubbed ‘the Brothers Grim’. Louis Walsh was more positive though. They reminded him of Boyzone, the group he managed from the 1990s, who debuted on Irish TV with an embarrassing dance display but survived the experience and scored some of the biggest hits of the decade. ‘Everybody said they weren’t going to make it,’ Louis told the twins, ‘but they did and there’s a little bit of that with you guys.’ He also called them ‘the new Bros’, fully aware that the Goss twin pop sensations of the late 1980s had attracted devotion, or flak, but almost never indifference.
Louis would mentor the Grimes brothers in the Groups category. He knew that, in pop music and in television terms, annoying the viewing public a little was a sure-fire way of holding their attention. Take out anyone infuriating and The X Factor risked having a succession of good singers with similar personalities. The need to keep the public interested/irked was paramount. In reality-TV entertainment, the only sin is to be boring.
It was important to find strong newcomers – ones with big personalities – rather than bring back middling pop figures to have another go. These competitions were about discovering stars, not reviving them. Ex-members of One True Voice (who came second on Popstars: The Rivals in 2002) and S Club Juniors came close to being short-listed on The X Factor in 2009 but did not progress further. There was concern at the number of ‘recycled’ acts, ones who had already achieved minor success without becoming household names, or familiar faces from other TV talent shows. Someone like Olly Murs, with no obvious track record in the music industry, was exactly the sort of figure Cowell and his team might be looking for.
Olly and the other lucky X Factor finalists would be house sharing during the weeks of the show’s live finals. Home would be a specially designated six-bedroom house based in Golders Green, North London. Worth an estimated £6 million, its other features included a gym, a ‘media room’ with computer games and a 63” plasma TV, and a suspended walkway that extended out from the kitchen on to a landscaped garden.
The 12 remaining acts in the contest had moved in on Monday, 5 October 2009, five days before the live finals began on TV. Any floor-to-ceiling windows were papered over to keep out the lenses of the paparazzi. But once young fans became aware of its existence, it became common for them to gather outside. School head teachers were asked by the programme’s executives to try to stop pupils from going near it but youngsters persisted in hanging around. One 12-year-old fan suggested the obsession was one of curiosity rather than out-and-out fandom. ‘I don’t think they’re proper celebrities,’ she said. ‘But they’re on TV at the moment and I know who they are, so I wanted to see what they’re like in real life.’
By late October, when schools were on a half-term break, the press were reporting that neighbouring residents were tiring of the noise. Some young visitors were showing up as early as 6.30 a.m. and leaving litter around the area. The Chinese Ambassador, Madam Fu Ying, lived nearby and was reported as having complained to the Foreign Office about the constant commotion. A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy – who had had the property since 1959 – confirmed that a complaint had been made after girls had defaced the intercom at the Ambassador’s front door and the border fence of her property with declarations of love for both Olly and fellow contestant Lloyd Daniels.
John and Edward were soon in hot water too: a story circulated that, when two teenagers flashed their breasts at them, they responded by gripping their crotches in a Michael Jackson fashion. This led to them being banned from signing autographs or having any other contact with fans. The last straw for the residents was a fans’ ‘serenade’ to Olly, which took place at 2.30 a.m. Police patrols increased around the property and a fence was erected, as plans were made to relocate the X Factor house to another area of London for the next series.
But the clamour of fans outside the house was an interesting challenge for the stars of the future inside. How would they cope with the attention, and with the constant requests for a smile and a kiss to be blown? Despite an 8.30 p.m. curfew for the house’s temporary occupants, the truly persistent who hung around longer and later might be rewarded with a friendly wave. It was soon reported that Olly was especially happy to acknowledge and engage with such fans. When in the public eye, you don’t always get to choose when and how you encounter the people who keep you there. You may be having a bad day as a celebrity but it pays to be cheery and engaging, not grumpy or aloof. Especially when there’s a competition to be won. ‘We’re not there to make friends,’ Olly would later say. ‘We’re there to win the show.’
Female fans outside the property weren’t Olly’s only admirers. Inside, rival Danyl said the best-looking guy in the house had to be Olly. ‘He’s a true man’s man. He is always walking about just in his pants.’ As Danyl, Jamie and Olly were all sharing the same room, things could get tense in such close proximity. Reports circulated saying that there was a no-sex rule in the house, which could be frustrating, especially for the slightly older contenders. ‘We aren’t allowed any female visitors,’ explained Olly. ‘We all cuddle. But it can be a bit too much having all these beautiful girls hug you. You’re like, “Oh God, I give up.”’
An endless stream of stories from inside the house would seep into the gossip columns of the newspapers that autumn. Inevitably, many of them centred round the teenage twins John and Edward. Had they eaten all the food in the kitchen? Were they the source of an infestation of head lice? That one was never confirmed but it underlined their role in the contest – and in the house – as larger-than-life