I’m sure I’ve mentioned on this blog my commitment to the pursuit of truth – fleeting and everlasting – through personal engagement. You won’t read here any commentaries delivered from the comfort and safety of my own armchair, like those of other observers who are content to sit and grumble about the horror and degradation of reality TV shows without ever experiencing them at first hand. Now that these seem to occupy half the schedules on most channels, and with all the fuss about Susan Boyle, I thought I should, on behalf of those who follow this blog, and to satisfy my own indestructible curiosity, expose myself to the potential humiliation of an audition for one of these shows. And so, being the possessor of what has kindly been described as a pleasing baritone voice, last Saturday I took myself off to auditions for the X-Factor at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.

Naturally I attended incognito, adopting the name ‘Harry Harvey’ for the event.

At 6.oo am on Saturday morning ‘Harry’ strolls across to Platform 2 on a deserted Ludlow station. It is a clear morning filled with spring bird song, rudely interrupted by a disembodied female voice from under the telly screen that shows which trains have been cancelled. “Please be aware…” it says, with irritating (and now ubiquitous) superfluity “…that the whole of this station is designated a no-smoking area.”

Presumably some omniscient CCTV device has spotted me and, consulting its database, found that I was once a deeply committed smoker, although it is evidently unaware that on April 25th 1995 (14 years ago to the day), I cut my cigarette habit from 3-4 packs a day to zero.

I’ve just propped my videocamera on top of a rubbish bin and switched it on so that I can address a few discreet words to it about my plans for the day when an unmistakeable whiff of cigarette smoke reaches me, and I glance round to see I’ve been joined on the platform by a small white-haired lady in jeans who is sucking away vigorously (and oblivious to the advice of the electronic watcher) at her first gasper of the day. And I will say that, committed non-smoker though I now am, I don’t mind. I’ve always felt it would be fair to allow uncontrollable fumeurs at least a small segregated and distant section of the platform to carry out their self-destructive habit (which raises so much revenue for governments of all persuasions) where they could be joined by people eating foul-smelling Big Macs (which should, but don’t yet produce any revenue to fund their consumers’ later hospitalisation).

By the time the 4.54am from Crewe to Milford Haven reaches Ludlow, it contains only a scattering of dozers with their heads on the tables. I find an unoccupied table, on the west side of the train so that after we’ve passed Hereford I can enjoy the sight of the Black Mountains in the morning sun.

Crossing in to Wales and reaching Abergaveny at 7.20, the train begins to fill with noisy Welsh families, all bound for Cardiff and the stardom that awaits them at the Millennium Stadium, joined by more at Pontypool, Cwmbran and Newport. Their enthusiasm and commitment makes me think that if education were run as a reality TV show… well, you can imagine, how well-informed the late St Jade might have been.

As the train pulls out of what the station announcers call Casnewydd towards Cardiff on a stretch of line I seldom take, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m not being more intrepid than the calls of my profession demand in exposing myself to possible ridicule. But I allow my qualms to be displaced by the thought that although Newport is traditionally considered one of the ugliest towns in Britain, it does have one distinctive and handsome building, the 1930s art deco Town Hall and Tower that stand on the northern slope of that unfortunate conurbation. Cardiff station, too, I notice, has a few art deco brush strokes about it, of which more could be made, in subtle contrast to the spiky, bulging beauty of the Stadiwm y Mileniwm.

I leap down from the train, now quite at ease about confronting those X-factor naysayers. The sun still shines (although the Guardian has plonked a black cloud the size of large raisin over South Wales in their weather forecast), I’m wearing a sharp retro blue-checked jacket, which I bought for £20 from the Zani Lady Flea Market in Ludlow, and a neckerchief of fine Liberty silk is flapping around my neck. I hum a few bars of My Foolish Heart, the song I’ve selected as my victim for the day, and stride off briskly towards the Shrine of Welsh Rugby.

As I approach the nearest entrance, a steward in an ill-fitting, orange reflective garment approaches me. ‘Are you singing alone, sir?’

I’m surprised. How does he know that this grey-haired man in a dodgy plaid jacket c1975 has come to sing? I look nothing like Des O’Connor. And, unlike other contestants beginning to converge on the Stadium from every direction (and it’s still only 8am), I’ve brought no support team.

I admit that, yes, I am singing alone and I’m directed to cross the River Taff, which oozes gently down the west flank of the Stadium. I stroll with a few dozen other humming proto-stars for a quarter of a mile up the west bank, recrossing the river to enter by a north gate, where a crowd of several thousand has preceded me – some tell me they have been there since the night before – which turns out to be a pointless gesture.

Only now do I take the trouble to work out that the sessions you see on TV, in which Simon Cowell mentally destroys a few deluded wannabes and Louis Walsh has water thrown at him, can’t possibly be happening that day. Cowell and his lieutenants, I’m told, are coming tomorrow (Sunday), and will be presented with no more than 100 of the 2,000+ hopefuls who’ve turned up this morning. It’s obvious really; Simon and Cheryl and the others couldn’t be expected to hang around and give 2 or 3 minutes each to 1,900 no-hopers; working 8 hours a day (and without coffee breaks – which I couldn’t see Cheryl putting up with) the process would take 8½ days.

The next three hours soon drag as we zig-zag like lost escargots along the walkway above the river towards Stadium Gate One. The punters are sporadically encouraged by an unidentifiable cheer-leader and bursts of X-Factor theme music to shout and scream and look excited, although most of them by now are looking knackered and nervous as hell. A lot are still squeezing in a little late rehearsal of their songs, perhaps so they won’t forget their key once it comes to performing, but I have a secret weapon – a backing track for my song in my preferred key which I’ve bought as an MP3 from Backing Tracks Online and downloaded to my phone. I’ll stuff in the earphones and play a quick blast of it just before going in (or so I think) to my a capella audition.

While we wait and the rest of the hopefuls wonder what this strange looking, not very youthful geezer is doing in their midst, I discuss prospects with other contestants – Emmas and Kylies mostly – and their devoted families. Wade and Alisha have come along from Casnewydd; they’re going to sing as individual artistes, but it’s soul singer Wade, a quiet, reflective man, who is the serious contender. Regrettably, I don’t hear him sing but he looks like he can. Nearby a group of Cardiff girls, taller, blonder, slimmer than Charlotte Church sing a cappella in close harmony, and all around are bursts of Beyonce muezzin calls and tremulous Enrique Iglesias warbles. It’s very discouraging. My song, I’ve discovered, was first published in 1920. I was born in 1948.These things are going to count against me, I feel, in so far as I have any serious ambition, but I am looking forward to being insulted by Cowell and winking at Cheryl Tweedy and my chances of being among 100 out of 2,000 are looking, frankly, pathetic.

But, I tell myself, I’m here to observe, not to win, and hummed a few bars of My Foolish Heart – not too loud; I don’t want to discourage the others as we shuffle minutely closer to the mighty stadium and a life of singing stardom.

[next time.... I tell you how it feels.]

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