Gonna Make You A Star...?

Well, today was the day. My iCal schedule had the day coloured in green as a "rest day from work" but it's been anything but restful - been quite busy, and not been paid a penny for it! But hopefully it will pay off handsomely in the near future...

I'm talking, of course, about my Eurovision entry. I think when I woke up this morning the truth of what I was attempting to do finally hit me. All through this I have been playing things very cool, and saying that I'm really not that bothered whether I get selected for the BBC show or not, that I'm just doing it to say I had a go... but of course, you want to do the very best you can, and I had been getting advice and hints from various people in my life - some of which quite conflicting. The one consistent piece of advice was "be yourself"... but one person would tell me I should do X, the other would say X was not a good idea... there's no way I could please them all.

And I began thinking, the people who really mattered in this - the people I had to please - the selection committee at the BBC, what would they think of me? Today, I had the camcorder. Footage would be shot this afternoon which would - definitely - be my entry for this. The accompaning application form would have to be written, in which I would have to state my reasons for entering the contest. I was beginning to feel the same way I felt when I took my Highers at school in 1990. I was beginning to freak out a bit. There'd be, what, thousands of entries for this, yeah? I doubt more than about 50 will get shortlisted for the show. So I'd have to be in the top 2% minimum - and more likely the top 0.2% - to be packing my bags at New Year. And I'm not a trained singer, at all.

I started thinking "I can't do this".

And when my camera-girl came round this afternoon and we shot take after take, I still felt something was not right. OK, I've seen myself on YouTube doing this, and so have my readers if they read Sunday's entry. (And incidentally, I don't know who rated my clip 5/5 - but if it was you, thanks!) But this was different - here I was, much higher quality pictures in widescreen on my TV, and this was going to be the actual performance!! And I wasn't happy with the way I was singing - or some of the notes - perhaps I was wanting a perfect performance (which is impossible) or one beyond my actual ability (again, impossible) And as time went on, I started getting tired, and the quality went down again...

It didn't help that while the taping was going on, camera-girl got some rather depressing news sent to her, which made her feel really angry and I rather got the reaction to it :( which killed my enthusiasm for the whole thing. Nevertheless we dealt with that and carried on, watching the takes again. And I saw one which seemed to work OK. I was reasonably happy with it, and I said "if I had to choose from today's takes, that would be it". Maybe I could do better if we all came back tomorrow night. But I'm getting tired, and I don't think I want to work on it anymore. This will have to do, and if it's not good enough, then so be it.

I'd been taking this maybe a bit too seriously. It was all supposed to be a bit of fun, and now I'd worked myself up to the stage of just wanting to send the thing off and be done with it, so it's over and I can go on to other things in my life. Which I will do - tomorrow or Thursday, when I "make the final cut" from the footage shot. I could do it tonight, but I'm just too emotionally drained.

But ask me about it in a few days, and I'll tell you I loved every minute of it!

DAVID ESSEX - GONNA MAKE YOU A STAR
(single released 1974)