Wed 22 Jun 2005
Scotsman
THE lights go down, the crowd cheers wildly and Pop Idol finalist Craig Chalmers prepares to meet his adoring fans. He limbers up his vocal chords, checks his spiky blond hair is looking good and heads on to the stage.
It's not quite Wembley Arena - or even the SECC for that matter. In fact, it's more likely to be a smoke-filled club anywhere from Wick to Dumfries, where tipsy women are begging him to whip off his clothes.
Singing with Scotland's answer to the Chippendales, G-Force, may be a long way from the heady days of appearing before millions of Pop Idol fans, but that doesn't bother the 23-year-old.
He's just one of a string of locals who have fleetingly passed through our living rooms in a myriad of reality television shows. Like most, he may not have found fame and fortune, but life after the cameras have packed up and gone has never been quite the same.
"Pop Idol taught me a lot," says Craig, who made it to the last ten alongside fellow Scot, and the show's winner, Michelle McManus, before being voted off. "I'm happy doing what I do now - G-Force is just 30 per cent of it, the rest of the time I appear at nightclubs, social clubs, and holiday parks.
"OK, I was doing a lot of that before Pop Idol," he shrugs, "but it helped boost my reputation. I'm on better fees now and I get better jobs - I'm actually booked up right until next year." After a brief interlude with Scots boy band No Reason - they reached number seven in the Scottish charts before splitting up - Craig is concentrating on G-Force and cabaret appearances instead.
"I do a kind of half-strip, a 'Men in Black' routine where we start with suits and strip down to shorts and vests. But that's as far as I go. I'm a singer, not a stripper, but sometimes the crowd don't realise that.
"They can get pretty wild and it can be hard to concentrate on your singing when girls are throwing their knickers at you and grabbing you in places they shouldn't. Let's just say, they help me hit the high notes!"
He claims that Pop Idol - despite the cut-throat competition and judges' scathing comments - was a positive experience. "Appearing on that kind of thing often helps kick-start people into getting the motivation they need to go for something," he says.
However, not everyone gets what they want from handing over their private lives for public consumption.
Jeni Ayris, who runs the African café Ndebele in Tollcross, revealed her weight and her desperate search for love to millions on BBC's Diet Trials, a programme that followed slimmers from around the country.
While Jeni, 40, shed almost three stones from her 5ft 5ins frame thanks to an Atkins-style diet, her hunt for Mr Right - which involved cameras following her to singles nights - was less than successful.
"I did have a boyfriend at the end but it was pretty short-lived, and apart from one other short relationship, I'm still single. And I've put back on a lot of the weight that I lost," she laughs.
On the plus side, reality television was a great motivator. "You are certainly less likely to cheat on a diet if the whole country is watching you," she says.
That's something Doreen Blainey agrees with. She also lost weight while being followed by the cameras - this time for Scottish TV's reality show Natural Born Winners, a programme which followed participants as they strived to change their lives with motivational guru Robin Sieger.
While Doreen's four and half stones weight loss may have now slowed down, appearing on the programme really was life- changing - she's got a new job, taken up hillwalking, joined a gym and changed her eating habits.
"The cameras are the best incentive in the world," concludes Doreen, of Castle Road in Port Seton, East Lothian. "The whole experience really changed me and I've never regretted it a bit."
For former university researcher Kevin McMahon, it was more the confidence boost he received during his appearance on Channel 4's Faking it programme that led to a dramatic change - he recently turned his back on his former life to become a professional magician.
Kevin, of Haymarket, spent four weeks training with expert conjurors before performing his seven-minute routine in front of a panel of judges, including Paul Daniels. He did so well he quit Heriot-Watt University, where he was studying for a physics PhD, to become a full-time entertainer.
"I came back to my desk after filming and managed just two hours," he recalls. "I thought 'I can't do this any more'.
"I didn't think I was doing myself any justice unless I gave it a shot."
Not everyone on reality television has a life-altering experience, and for Big Brother's first escapee, kilt-wearing Sandy Cumming, life is just as it always was.
A former fitness trainer at Edinburgh's Balmoral Hotel, he has now returned to his pre-Big Brother day job as a personal shopper at London store Selfridges, and he steadfastly avoids anything to do with television appearances and magazine interviews - unlike many of his fellow housemates, including Jade Goody and winner Kate Lawler.
"I didn't do anything when I left. I didn't speak to the press, I didn't go looking for TV work," says Sandy, originally from Fife.
"There are a lot of misconceptions that reality television affects your life," he argues. "If you want to go back to real life, it is very, very easy. But most people who go into reality television now don't want to go back to real life.
"I think my Big Brother series was probably the last one where most of the people weren't there because they wanted television careers.
"Now, most of them have got their agents in place before they even go in."
Sandy, 46, entered the Big Brother house in 2003, saying he was there just for the experience. The novelty soon wore off and he was filmed attempting to escape by scaling a wall.
These days, Sandy doesn't bother watching any television reality shows - not even Big Brother. "I'd rather watch some drama," he says with a shrug. "It's much more entertaining."
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
ANNA NOLAN - Big Brother: Although from Dublin, Anna was known to locals at the Blue Moon Café in Broughton Street where she once worked.
The lesbian former trainee nun appeared on the first Big Brother - just losing out to Liverpudlian Craig Phillips.
Now back in Ireland, she has carved out a highly successful TV career, becoming Ireland's first television agony aunt in Ask Anna and the Irish answer to Fern Brittan fronting a lifestyle programme, The Afternoon Show.
ELIZABETH WOODCOCK - Big Brother 2: Elizabeth, 30, from Edinburgh, was a graphic designer at the time. She is now a travel writer, has spent almost a year on a mammoth motorcycle tour through Eastern Europe, lived in Cyprus and is now understood to be based in Seville where she is teaching English.
AINSLIE HENDERSON -X-Factor: Edinburgh-born Ainslie, 26, below, wowed the judges on the BBC's first X-Factor, won by David Sneddon.
He came fourth and clinched a £250,000 record deal. His song Keep Me a Secret got to number five in the UK charts in 2003. He now lives in London. He appeared on the programme with Lorna Grant, a nursery assistant from West Lothian. She is thought to have returned to her old job.
MARC DILLON - POP IDOL 2003: Marc, 24, originally from Livingston, sobbed his way out of Pop Idol 2 having been dubbed Yob Idol for his involvement in an assault when he was 17. He now lives in Essex, has appeared in pantomimes and regularly sings in south of England social clubs.
