Coming to your screens soon.... (Popstars)

Member Name: harlequin1

Product:	Popstars
Date:	23/10/01 (82 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gives kids the chance to shine., Once in a lifetime experience.

Disadvantages: So many heart broken kids that didn't get picked, Queuing

Some kind of Pop Stars/Pop Idol type programme but featuring 8-14yr olds.

S Club 7/CBBC have been holding auditions this weekend for kids to make up a support group for their concert at Wembley in Feb 2002.

My daughters’ friend saw this advertised on CBBC and asked if my daughter would like to go with her to the audition.

Up for everything as Xanthe is she said she would like to go. After two weeks practicing (see other op!!?) and roping in another girl we were off to audition.

Auditions began at 10am Sunday morning at the Lowry Theatre in Manchester. We arrived at around 8.45 to find a queue of about three hundred wannabes already excitedly waiting for their chance to shine.

By the time 10am arrived the queue had swelled to about 3000 young stars in the making. All of them practicing their songs and dances, doing their make up and spying on the opposition.

Just before 10am the cameras came out to film the queues of waiting kids. Everyone wanted to get his or her face on the camera. This was another chance for the kids to show how good they were. Little groups of kids all over the place were bursting out with S Club renditions in the hope of getting on film.

Some of these kids that we heard while we were stood queuing had absolutely fantastic voices. I wouldn’t have wanted to try and choose 50 or so kids to send through to the London Final Auditions.

Nicki Chapman (of pop stars/pop idol fame) then came out to have a look at the waiting crowd. I have to say she is a lot better looking in real life and it is definitely true that the cameras put on an extra 5lbs. She is actually quite thin and doesn’t look anything like the little barrel that she appears to be on TV.
She was lovely and stopped to speak to loads of people. She wasn’t judging the first round of auditions but she was judging after the first few thousand were whittled down to a couple of hundred.

Tw
o of the CBBC presenters were also there doing the rounds with the cameras. Xanthe asked one of them for an autograph but was politely refused, if he signed one for her he would have to sign one for everybody.

At 10am the queue started moving and the first 200 kids were let into the building.
No one quite knew what the procedure was or how long it would take so we all stood there waiting nervously. At this point parents were given a contract to sign. I must admit if I thought Xanthe had any chance whatever I don’t know whether I would have signed it.
The first line of the contract read as follows: -

I assign to the BBC the complete copyright and all other rights in my contributions for use in all media now known or which may be developed in future.
Is that signing your life away or what?

Anyway as I was pretty sure she had absolutely no chance of getting through I signed like every other parent. Can you imagine turning up and queuing for something like this with your excited child, getting to the door and then refusing to sign the contract?
Life just wouldn’t be worth living.

As we walked through the door all the kids were given a number and contracts were collected.

The kids were called in to audition in groups of 100. They had been given a choice of 7 S club songs to sing. All the kids singing the same song all sang together while someone walked round listening to them. The best ones in the groups were called out to sing on their own. The best of those were asked to come back at 3pm for final auditions to go through to the London finals in November.

Needless to say Xanthe did not get through the first part of the auditions although her friend Jamie did get called out to sing on her own. Jamie did not get through to the 3pm auditions.

There were some fantastic singers who also did not get through the first part of the auditions. It seemed to be more luck than anything else. <
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Parents were not allowed in to watch the auditions. We had to sit in a separate area of the Theatre and wait for them to come back. This had to be the worst part of the day.
Kids were coming back to their parents and absolutely sobbing their hearts out because they hadn’t been picked. This is not an easy thing to watch. I am very lucky with Xanthes' attitude. She came out of the audition absolutely buzzing that her friend had been picked to sing solo. She wasn’t in the slightest bit bothered that she hadn’t got through.

All in all the auditions took about half an hour from entering the Lowry Theatre to them knowing if they were coming back at 3pm.

When we left the theatre it had started to rain and people were still queuing for miles to get their chance to audition. I am sure they would have been stood waiting for hours and I am so glad that we got there when we did.

So when it gets screened on the TV make sure you look out for us. My daughter and her friends sang for the cameras while they were queuing. I am the parent slowly sinking into the background and trying to hide behind the kids.

Xanthe totally enjoyed her day meeting people she had seen on the telly, she was chuffed to bits with her signed S Club 7 poster that she was given for taking part. She can’t wait for it to be screened now just so she can see if she has got her face on the telly.

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