Did Rhydian have the X Factor after all?

Feb 8 2008 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

Emma Pinch discovers X-Factor runner-up Rhydian Roberts has a down-to-earth attitude to stardom

WEIRD. Dead-eyed. Insecure. Those were some of the kinder epithets used by X Factor judge Sharon Osborne to describe runner-up Rhydian Roberts.

To be fair, she had a point. He was got up like a Gotham City villain on stage with his gimlet eyes, frosty quiff and knock-out voice; his diffident alter-ego seemed a bit suspicious.

But just as she got into her waspish stride, Sharon, for once, found herself a step behind the public mood. We were thawing to old Mr Whippy hair. He was a riddle who piqued our interest. He was a Valleys rugby boy and his weirdness a publicist’s fantasy; he was a freakish body-builder. Then he was unmasked as a virgin, and you couldn’t get weirder than that, said the press.

In the end, he seemed like a shoe-in for the X Factor crown, and most of us were slack-faced in disbelief when pop pixie Leon Jackson won, with his “love me” puppy eyes and teary Scottish mum, and debate raged over rumours of a fix. We, the public, couldn’t let Rhydian go so quickly.

I expected politeness and puddles of silence during an interview with Rhydian, who is, remember, just 24. But the Rhydian I encountered, relaxed at his Welsh home after two weeks in the Mexican sun, was garrulous and, with the gossipy rise and fall of his South Wales accent, came over as engagingly honest, up-beat, firm in his convictions and down to earth. As disciplined as any athlete, he has faith in his talent, but he’s careful not to take his good fortune for granted.

Simon Cowell has predicted his new signing will earn £20m over the next decade or so, but when Dermot O’Leary pronounced Leon Jackson the X Factor winner, Rhydian’s future didn’t look as rosy.

Going on X Factor had been a substantial gamble for Rhydian, a classically-trained baritone who trained at Birmingham’s prestigious Conservatoire. Even a win doesn’t guarantee success – for every Leona Lewis there are a dozen Steve Brooksteins.

“A lot of people in the classical world look down their noses at X Factor so it was a shot in the dark,” explains Rhydian.

“I knew what doors it would open if I won but if it went wrong there’s no way I’d be employed as a classical singer again, they just wouldn’t take me seriously.

“That’s why, on the night of the final, the first time I shed a tear, it was because I thought all my hopes and dreams might have been quashed, and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next in my career.”

In the event, Simon rang him up after the show and told him he was going to have a fantastic career, and offered him a record deal. Being different had paid off, something he insists is genuine, though embellished by TV, and something he’s proud of. But he’s had to grow a tough hide to weather the barrage of opinions picking over his character.

“My hair, initially, was quite big and white, that was a stylist’s decision, and I was happy to go along with it,” he admits.

“Quirkiness gives me an edge. If I wear boring suits, black suits with normal flattened hair with a classical voice, that’s been done before. I like being different.

“I don’t fit the mould as a normal X Factor contestant, normally perhaps, they have some kind of story. There were plenty of stories I could have used, but I didn’t want to. In all fairness, it’s the TV companies who delve in and hit on a story and like for you to mention it. It could be, ‘I’m doing it for my mum’, and then you see it time and time again.

“I thought, ‘I’m just going to be me’”.

He was the Marmite of the TV talent show world, viewers swooned or shuddered. Sharon Osborne, initially, fell into the latter camp.