Slightly surprisingly my teenage son decided to audition for X Factor a few months ago. He was given a time slot of 8.30am at the Excel Centre this morning. Because he had yet another “gathering” at my house last night he got to bed around 3am so I assumed he probably wouldn’t get up in time but at 7am this morning he woke me up to say that he couldn’t wake any of his friends up and did I want to go with him…..
So. I drove halfway across London in the pissing rain and we got there 5 minutes late. We parked. I thought a two hour parking ticket should be ample time. We asked for directions. I had assumed that as he had been given one of the first slots of the day we wouldn’t have a very long wait before he got to do his thing. How wrong was I. ”You have to go out that door love and join the queue at the bottom of the stairs”:-
According to one of the stewards there were about 10,000 people in front of us. How did that happen when we were only 5 minutes late?? He told us that It would take approximately 3 hours to get everybody inside and then once inside everybody was expected to wait in one of two very large holding pens. The approximate waiting time once inside the building would probably be around 8 hours. 8 HOURS???? UNBELIEVABLE.
Needless to say, we bought a Subway sandwich and a coffee, got back in the car and came home. Amazingly we appeared to be the only people going the right way. We seem to be making a habit of this. We did exactly the same thing for the “Britain’s Got Talent” auditions last year.
Personally I think the way they organise the auditions are appalling. The weather was awful. There were young children in the crowd. Clearly everybody was given the same time slot. Apparently yesterday 28,000 people turned up and queued. The reason there were 10K people in front of us was because lots of them arrived yesterday and slept overnight in the queue.
The man holding the white umbrella is Dermot O’Leary btw. Sorry, you’ll just have to trust me on that one. I couldn’t get his face:-
May 2nd, 2010 at 12:30 pm
What a performance!
Hope it goes well when you go back later. One of eldest daughter’s friends went to the X Factor audition in Manchester last year. A very good singer, capable and confident, performing in public almost weekly, didn’t even get past the assistants!
Came home very disillusioned with the whole process.
But that said, best good luck to your son…
May 2nd, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Whatever time slots they allocate, people will turn up much ealier. They’d be better off being honest about how long you will be there. Some of my sixth formers got through to the third round and then withdrew to concentrate on their A levels. I kind of think they were right.
May 4th, 2010 at 9:36 am
Well, yes, that is the problem. I hadn’t realised how much it would effect his school work if he got through – apparently you have to give up school when you move into the house and that’s not going to happen….Lx
May 2nd, 2010 at 10:34 pm
Oh no….so he didn’t audition? :0(
May 4th, 2010 at 9:35 am
Nope….Lx
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:38 am
I am a big fan of your blog and I read it regularly. Keep up the
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:49 pm
My niece’s best friend went to the same audition yesterday. She got through to the next round, and my neice, who went with her, got home at around 10.30pm, a silly amount of time. That waiting would’ve put me off too.
May 4th, 2010 at 9:34 am
Oh that’s brilliant though that she’s got through. Makes me think maybe I should have stayed…..Lx
May 5th, 2010 at 9:35 pm
Wow, that’s a lot of people and a really long day. I can quite see why a sane person wouldn’t stay!
Do people really do that with young children in tow? That’s really some dedication.