"Tonight Matthew... (Stars in their Eyes)

Member Name: W Shakespeare

Product:	Stars in their Eyes
Date:	23/06/01 (2371 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cameramen have to follow you around your workplace, Sometimes you get to wear a wig, The audience always applaud no matter how bad you were

Disadvantages: Matthew Kelly's waistcoats, Matthew Kelly's jokes, Matthew Kelly's haircut

...I’m going to be Kurt Cobain." Now that could be messy.

Stars In Their Eyes (SITE – critics say with a silent 'H' after the 'S') was born in 1990, around the time pub goers were regularly experiencing the ear-splitting, tune mangling phenomenon shipped over from the Far East called 'karoake'.

Karoake is a Japanese word meaning 'empty orchestra'. I prefer to use another Japanese word for those masochistic enough to indulge in the practice – 'kamikaze', which means 'divine wind'. However, there was nothing heavenly about the hot air belted out by musical microphone hoggers in Red Lions and White Horses up and down the country, as publicans woke up to the possibility of filling their tatty premises with drunken wannabe Tina Turners and Frank Sinatras on otherwise quiet nights.

Take away the silly wigs and make-up, and that’s basically what SITE is – pub karoake. Even amiable presenter Matthew Kelly mirrors the worst aspects of middle-aged DJ's who invariably run karoake evenings, by sporting suspect facial hair, wearing garish waistcoats and cracking God-awful jokes. All he needs is a prime time slot on BBC Radio 1 and he’ll have made the full transition.

SITE is just one of THOSE programmes which you feel obliged to watch on Saturday evenings, and you know you shouldn’t be viewing if you had any semblance of a social life. Recognise this?:

...."Shall we go out tonight dear – maybe we could go for a meal?"

...."Nah, let’s stay in love – The 'Stars In Their Eyes' final is on tonight."

...."Ooh great, what time?”

...."I think it's after Catchphrase..."

The show’s secret lies in the fact that everyone, at some time, has listened to a song and imagined themselves on stage, wowing a crowd of thousands. In addition, unli
ke the Eurovision Song Contest, most of the songs are recognisable and aren’t in some obscure European language (although you do get the odd one in French).

And of course, in recent years we have had 'The Live Final', which in a world of pre-recorded entertainment has actually become more of a novelty as the years have worn on. The interactive telephone voting also makes the viewer feel part of the proceedings, even if they’ve only managed to get 22 consecutive engaged tones.

For those of you who’ve been in a coma for the last 10 years, the format couldn’t be simpler. Five contestants tell us about their dreary hum-drum lives and how being told they had been selected to be on the programme was on a par with being told they were the second incarnation of Jesus Christ. They are then made-up and costumed as far as possible to look like their chosen artist and attempt to impersonate them – often with the support of dancers or fake instruments – by performing one of their character’s best known hit records.

Their biggest ordeal of the night is an embarrassing chat with Matthew Kelly before they go on. Due to the fact that Kelly is about 9 feet tall, he always succeeds in making the contestants look like circus midgets.

The winner goes on to a live grand final, and the overall winner receives...er, bugger all. Except they should get a holiday season in Rhyll if they’re lucky – ironically, a place where Matthew Kelly once had a job as a bingo caller. (Cue Elton John lookalike singing "The Circle of Life"...)

SITE has certainly had its ups and downs. The original presenter was former Crackerjack ("CRACKERJACK!") frontman Leslie Crowther, but after an unfortunate car accident he had to be replaced by Matthew Kelly in 1993. A far cry from Kelly’s first big break in 1979 when he was one of the 'celebrities' (and I use that term loosely) o
n Lenny Bennett’s Punchlines – a programme more renowned for being a graveyard of ambition than the birthplace, as Arthur Mullard will testify.

The show hit the headlines in 2000 when bookmakers reported a rush of "irregular betting" on Freddie Mercury impersonator Gary Mullen before the final. William Hill said shops around the country had taken high figure bets on Gary and 'The Sun' even reported concerns of a fix. A spokesman for bookmaker City Index encapsulated perfectly just how far the show had moved from cult to craze when he said "We’re doing huge business on Stars In Their Eyes – it’s the only thing anyone is interested in." God help us all.

The show has even dabbled in celebrity Stars In their Eyes, with the likes of David Ginola and Harry Hill rocking the microphone. But the show’s true appeal lies in the fact the its gives wannabe’s their 15 minutes of fame, not in fulfilling the egos of already successful celebrities.

This is a programme that can hold most people’s interest on Saturday evenings and is what middle-aged TV executives call "family entertainment". Its success is evident from the number of people who bother to watch and vote in the live finals, and a handful of contestants do go on to much greater things (which is more than can be said for Matthew Kelly).

The show may not be the most cerebral of Saturday night entertainment, but it’s still with us beacuse it's a television executive’s dream – big ratings, no prizes, just the kudos of winning. Even the winners of Popstars got to make a record.

Maybe the Popstars' band 'Hearsay' should go on Stars in Their Eyes? Or maybe they’d be worried about impersonating themselves?

UPDATE

Dusty Springfield has just won the 2001 live 'Stars in Their Eyes' final, narrowing pipping fellow decaying pop star Bob Mar
ley to first place. As if you cared. Still, at least David Bowie came last.

National Grid reported a massive surge in demand at exactly the same time as Des O'Connor appeared on the show, as the nation rushed to boil kettles, iron clothes and dry hair.

As Matthew Kelly said, they've never had anyone impersonating Des O'Connor. In fact, some unkind people would say that Des O'Connor himself has been pretending to be a singer for years.

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