I watched most of the programmes in the “Comic Relief
does Fame Academy” BBC TV series in the run-up to Red
Nose Day, 2005 (a “telethon” which raises money to
alleviate some of the problems of capitalism, mainly
in Africa but also in the UK). Unlike “Children in
Need”, which disabled activists have long campaigned
against (sometimes getting their protests broadcast
live on TV) demanding “Rights not Charity”, it does
not raise money for disabled causes. [It was revealed
on the front page of a national newspaper before the
first “Children in Need” telethon that Terry Wogan
demanded a huge fee to present it! Wogan’s only other
appearances on TV nowadays are to present the
Eurovision Song Contest, when he repeatedly talks
about it being fixed when neighbouring countries vote
for each other – even when they are countries that
have big ethnic tensions (like Greece and Turkey) or
those that have been recently at war with each other
(like Serbia, or whatever is left of the former
Yugoslavia is now called, and Bosnia)! In the past,
panels of people in the music industry allocated votes
to other countries, but now telephone voting is used
everywhere in Europe. In many other countries,
Eurovision is the musical highlight of the year, and
their best artists submit songs, but it is generally
treated as joke in the UK due to Wogan’s commentating.
Wogan is not being stupid – he is on the side of big
business (I don’t know whether he is in a
conspiratorial organisation such as MI5, or a more
secretive one so that whistleblowers like David
Shayler and Richard Tomlinson cannot spill the beans,
or simply cooperating with such people).] Before
talking about the “Comic Relief” version of “Fame
Academy”, I’d like to talk about that programme
generally and how it compares to other singing TV
talent shows.

I had not watched many “Fame Academy” programmes
before, but I did catch the final two programmes in
the first series (towards the end of 2002). All three
finalists, David Sneddon, Sinéad Quinn and Lemar, were
very good. Recent ITV programmes have generally not
uncovered artists with similar levels of talent, in my
opinion, despite a large number of series. The notable
exceptions to this point are Darius from “Pop Idol”,
Jamelia, Suzanne Shaw and Myleene Klass from “Pop
Stars: the Rivals”, and the operatic band G4 from
ITV’s most recent series “X-Factor” – which is better
than ITV’s earlier series because they allow bands to
audition together and have a category for older people
whereas the previous shows were ageist by preventing
older people from taking part (in addition to boys and
girls who are still discriminated against).

The ITV series “Pop Stars” was the first to show
auditions from budding pop stars, but the five winners
who were placed in the band HearSay, was entirely
chosen by a panel of judges. They were probably not as
talented as the people who came sixth to tenth,
because they formed Liberty X, which has had modest
success and is still going (although I don’t think
much of their “Thinking It Over” album) whereas
HearSay has disbanded and I’ve heard nothing more from
any of its ex-members. The highlight from “Pop Stars”
was Darius’ performance of Britney Spears’ song “Hit
Me Baby One More Time” – although Darius has
subsequently said that he regretted that audition, and
I am not keen on that song because it appears to
promote domestic violence. [My former revolutionary
socialist organisation, the Militant Tendency (which I
joined during the 18-million strong mass non-payment
campaign which it led that subsequently defeated the
poll tax and brought down Margaret Thatcher), later to
become Militant Labour and now the Socialist Party,
formed the Free Sara Thornton Campaign (leading to the
release of a woman who was convicted of murder and
jailed for life for killing her violent partner),
later to become the Campaign Against Domestic Violence
(CADV), which also campaigned for more women’s
refuges. However, the leadership of Women’s Aid, which
runs many refuges and had cooperated with the
Socialist Party in CADV, later launched a vicious
attack on that party (undoubtedly because they are
right-wing feminists who see men rather than
capitalism as the problem). I had gone to a large
meeting in Manchester Town Hall, but Women’s Aid
subsequently insisted on women’s only meetings, which
was a problem with CADV because some men suffer
domestic violence too, and it is important for women
who have experienced it to encounter good men in order
to fully recover from their ordeal. In contrast to the
attitude of the leaders of Women’s Aid, we saw
capitalist society, and the “nuclear family” which
capitalist politicians promote so that the husband can
control the wife and together control the children so
that big business remains in control (although
advances in women’s rights, which I fully support, are
undermining that form of control to a large extent
nowadays in this country).] Whereas virtually
everybody else featured in “Pop Stars” attempted to
sing a song in the same style as the original artist,
Darius showed far more originality, and was one of the
very few men brave enough to sing a song originally
performed by a woman.

“Pop Stars: the Rivals” was better than the original
“Pop Stars” because TV audiences were allowed to
whittle down the best singers, as selected by the
judges, to the final five (for men and women
separately). The judges believed that Jamelia who is
black was the best of the female singers, but she came
sixth probably due to the “experts” who advised her
what song to pick for the final. I was not impressed
by her performance in the final, probably because I
tend to prefer songs with a mixture of influences from
different genres since they usually show more
originality. Black musicians and singers have been
responsible for most genres of music (in particular
rock and roll, soul, jazz, R&B, reggae and rap) but
often white singers, musicians and songwriters take
influences from the different genres to produce better
songs. I thought the best singer in “Pop Stars: the
Rivals” was Suzanne Shaw. Phone polls are very easy to
manipulate, because there is no documentary evidence
about who voted for whom. A London radio station
received a lot of calls from people in that area
(where Jamelia comes from) who said that they had
voted for her, but heard a voice saying that they had
voted for Suzanne Shaw – who I thought the best singer
in that series and in the final, and deserved to come
first but only reputedly came fifth. Whereas Jamelia
was probably defrauded as well, I think that whoever
fixed the polling at ITV used the opportunity to
undermine a great white singer as well. As a result of
Jamelia getting voted off, the resulting band Girls
Aloud is all white. They were much better than their
male rivals, who quickly disappeared without a trace,
had a big Number One hit with “Songs of the
Underground” and are still going fairly strong.

[My favourite band of all time is Katrina and the
Waves, who have taken influences from a large number
of different genres. They are white except for Vince
de la Cruz who I think has Mexican ancestry (due to
his name and because two of their early songs are
about Mexico). They are best known for the love song
“Walking on Sunshine” and “Love Shine A Light” (which
is actually an anti-war song, talking about loving
people around the world, hence it winning Eurovision
by the largest amount ever and reaching Number 2 in
the British pop charts – those who think they are
uncool should buy the “Love Shine A Light” single and
listen to the “Xenomania club mix”, which is one of
the best dance tracks I have ever heard; undoubtedly
the main reason why the single kept climbing in the
charts at a time when that was virtually unheard of,
but I recently read that the other B-side “Spiderman”
is Katrina’s favourite of all their songs). Katrina
and the Waves’ best and very political album “Roses”,
which I bought in Canada but is available elsewhere as
“Turnaround”, is very hard to get hold of. The song
“23rd Psalm” on that album is an even better anti-war
song. I am planning to set up a revolutionary
socialist band called Galaxia after the general
election, and want the three Waves to be in the band.
For more about Galaxia, visit
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/galaxiamusic (the
message entitled “The brain, politics and music”, is
particularly worth reading since it talks about how
the brain works and how that relates to the struggle
for a world socialist revolution and different genres
of music – the most recent version of that message is
available at
www.socialiststeve.me.uk/brain-politics-music.htm);
the band will soon have a website at
www.galaxiamusic.org.]

There are also the problems of racism and political
bias in the music industry, since the people who
choose which songs to promote have enormous power over
which songs become hits – whether it is the
bureaucrats who limit what Radio 1 DJs are allowed to
play by selecting songs to go on the playlist, or
those who select which songs to promote on “CD:UK” or
“Top of the Pops” before they reach the charts.

ITV1 is the main big business channel, due to it being
the main channel on which adverts are shown, so it
tends to be more biased in favour of big business.
This entails rarely putting on left-wing political
programmes (the main exceptions being “Spitting
Image”, although that programme became less political
in its later years, and documentaries by the great
socialist journalist John Pilger) and tending to
promote music with lyrics that are very difficult to
hear, so that listeners cannot tell what messages the
songs are promoting. “CD:UK” is particularly guilty of
this, and is a major reason why the pop charts have
been so bad in recent years (although they have got a
bit better more recently due to shifts to the left in
society – last year’s albums by Green Day: “American
Idiot” and Eminem: “Encore” are particularly good and
political, and they have done well in the album charts
as well as launching big hit singles).

Darius was by far the greatest talent to come out of
all the ITV programmes, because he has great
song-writing skills as well as a wonderful voice with
great versatility. His first album was very good, but
his second album was even better, particularly the hit
single “Live Twice” in which he combines his husky low
voice with a very high pitch at times. He came third
to Will Young and Gareth Gates in “Pop Idol”. Will and
Gareth have generally performed copies of old hits
that differed very little from the original songs, but
to the newer generations who hadn’t heard the
originals, they undoubtedly sounded very good.
However, Will’s song “Leave Right Now” is far better,
but (although I don’t think it had been released
before) he didn’t write it. He did do some songwriting
on the same album, but I was not inspired by any of
those songs.

The problems with telephone polls, apart from the ease
of fiddling the figures, are that they tend to lead to
lowest common denominator choices and that they are
partly beauty contests. Apart from people feeling
sorry for Steve Brookstein, the “X-Factor” winner who
defeated G4, it was undoubtedly his sex appeal that
won him that contest. His rendition of “Against All
Odds” was not particularly good – and the fact that
his promised second single and album have failed to
materialise, leading to him being dubbed the
“Ex-Factor” in the Daily Mirror, have shown that he is
struggling. [However, he did indicate in that article
that he has written songs in the past and that he
didn’t want to rush out an album that was not
particularly good or one of covers, so he may surprise
his critics.]

The BBC has been criticised lately for its copy-cat
shows, and its bosses have promised to produce more
original material, but “Fame Academy” is much better
than the shows that is supposedly ripping off and it
would be a massive shame if it was ditched. This is
because the tendency for lowest common denominator
choices is lessened by the judges and then the
students whittling down the bottom three to a single
“student” to vote off, and because the students have
to write their own songs as well as learn to perform
cover versions of songs written by other people (but
the latter was not a factor in the “Comic Relief”
version due to students being voted off daily rather
than weekly). Although the first singles of the
contestants from some of the ITV shows have been new
songs, they were not written by the artists themselves
– apart from Darius’ great debut “Colourblind”. [I
think that song has anti-racist connotations, about
people not caring what colour the skin of the person
they love is – even if artists are not aware of it,
and their songs are apparently about love, their
subconscious insert messages in songs according to
whether they want to help or hinder the struggle for
socialism.]

On the first series of “Fame Academy”, David Sneddon
was probably the best songwriter. Certainly, his song
“Stop Living the Lie” (which went to Number One
shortly after Christmas) was brilliant. He is also a
very good piano player. [One of the “Pop Stars: the
Rivals” winners, Myleene Klass, was even better at the
piano and later left Girls Aloud to take up a
classical career, but she was not encouraged to
practice the piano or allowed to sing while playing it
during the ITV series.] However, his singing ability
was not as good as Sinéad Quinn, who came second, or
Lemar, who came third. David’s album “Seven Years –
Ten Weeks” is unremarkable apart from “Stop Living the
Lie”, whereas Sinéad’s first album has had great
reviews on Amazon (I’ve ordered it but not received it
yet) and Lemar has done some brilliant songs since,
including political ones. Lemar being black and
growing up in Northern Ireland has obviously had a big
effect on his political outlook, leading him to want
to use his fame to help change the world.

Just as Jamelia received bad advice for the final, so
did Lemar. In the penultimate programme, he sang a
great version of Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2
U”. He dedicated that song to his girlfriend, so
obviously it was the one he liked the most – but the
one he chose for the final (when asked to sing again
his favourite from the series) was a much less
inspiring number (probably stuck in the R&B genre for
which he is best known), which is why he was beaten by
David Sneddon and Sinéad Quinn. Many of Lemar’s
singles have been similarly uninspired, but I have
liked some of the others (including “What about Love?”
from his first album “Dedicated”).

I tried to vote for Sinéad in the telephone poll, and
twice heard a voice saying that voting had closed even
though it hadn’t. I suspected at the time that the BBC
poll was rigged as well, and since she only lost
narrowly to David, a small number of other people
defrauded like myself could have made the difference.
However, I now think that it was conspirators on the
side of the working class who had infiltrated the BBC
polling organisation or telecommunications system
encouraging me to publicise possible racism and sexism
on “Pop Stars: the Rivals” and “Fame Academy”, which I
did do via a message I sent on the internet.

Men generally do much better in reality TV shows
(including completely different ones like “Big
Brother”) than women, but that seems to be due to
there being a greater female than male audience for
such shows, and people voting more according to who
they are attracted to than who performs better. David
repeatedly won weekly telephone polls for best
original song during that series, which may have been
more of a reflection of the demography of the TV
audience than his ability (but I’ll reserve judgement
until I receive Sinéad’s album and find out to what
degree the songs were written by her). Therefore, I
think I was wrong about David winning due to sexism.

Anyway, after the introduction that went on rather
longer than I intended when I started writing this
message, I’ll finally talk about the “Comic Relief”
version of “Fame Academy”!

I only realised something strange had been going on
after “Top of the Pops” presenter Reggie Yates had
been expelled from the house in the penultimate
programme. When the credits rolled, he was hugging the
other students who were stood in two rows. He had
hugged everybody stood in one of those rows until he
came to “Blue Peter” presenter Konnie Huq. Then, he
completely ignored Konnie and went across to hug comic
Adrian Edmondson in the other row! Any straight or
bisexual man with any taste (or gay man who had any
shred of decency) would have hugged Konnie, because
she is the sexiest woman who currently appears on TV!
[Indeed, she is the sexiest such woman ever, with the
possible exception of Martine McCutcheon, who was
Tiffany in EastEnders and subsequently went on to have
a singing career singing pop songs and songs from
musicals including performing in “My Fair Lady” on the
stage, and then went back to acting in the film “Love,
Actually” – for Martine’s significance in the struggle
for socialism, visit my page
http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk/martine.htm.]

I think that Reggie was partly motivated by racism
towards Asian Konnie, despite the fact that he is
black. Racism between black and Asian young people was
revealed to have reached an extreme level in some
areas of Britain in a recent TV documentary presented
by the black anti-racist campaigner Darcus Howe (who
was accompanied by an Asian so that Asian youths were
willing to speak to him). I have encountered it in
both directions in Manchester, as I reveal in my page
on “Racism & Fascism” (at
http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk/racism-fascism.htm).
Several years ago, fascists (in the British National
Party or National Front) persuaded some black people
from Moss Side to threaten Asian people on the Anson
Estate, and we (in my socialist organisation) defended
one threatened Asian family by mounting a 24-hour
guard at their home. On Christmas Eve last year, a
black friend of mine who is still at school was scared
about going to Rusholme late at night, so he asked if
I could accompany him. Rusholme is an area of
Manchester with a very high Asian population (and the
place with the greatest concentration of Indian,
Pakistani and Kashmiri curry houses anywhere in the
world – living together in harmony despite the war
between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and the
struggle for Kashmiri independence) and is a great
place for Asians and white people to go to. I took the
opportunity of carrying a “Show Racism the Red Card”
placard (against racism in football) that I had in my
flat when I went with my friend, and even sung a bit
of Labi Siffre’s song “Something Inside So Strong”
(about the fight for freedom in South Africa) – we
received quite a lot of beeps from cars showing their
support!

The extraordinary thing about Reggie was that he was
such a terrible singer that he was repeatedly in the
bottom two, having received a low number of votes from
the TV audience and failing to be saved by the judges,
but kept on being saved by other students – I think he
was kept in by them on four occasions and survived a
two-all tie by the audience vote on another occasion.
Reggie had a certain amount of sex appeal, which
Adrian commented on when he voted for Reggie on the
basis that his teenage daughters were in love with
him, but his singing was so terrible that the TV
audience much preferred Adrian (who was very funny
despite not having much singing ability either) to
him. When the students’ votes came from people who had
been stuck in the house with him, he was saved but
finally (on the penultimate programme) all the
students returned and he was voted off by eight votes
to four (keeping Adrian in the competition).

As well as manipulating his fellow students to vote
for him, I believe that Reggie undermined the
self-confidence of some of them. The point was
repeatedly made in the series how important
self-confidence was for coming up with a good
performance, and I not only think that Reggie
undermined Konnie’s, but also that of Dawn Steele from
BBC drama “Monarch of the Glen”.

Dawn was the best singer in the opening programme (not
just in my opinion but that of the judges too). On one
occasion in the house, one of the men commented that
four women were the best singers out of all those in
the series, and Dawn was one of them, but she
mentioned that she lost her confidence when she came
in the bottom three fairly early on, and went out in
the next programme.

However, I think that Reggie’s main target was Konnie,
as demonstrated by his behaviour when he went out
(possibly because he was aware of the role that she
may play in the world socialist revolution, because I
am inviting her to be in my band Galaxia, as well as
the issue of racism). Konnie was very good towards the
start of the series, and the thirty minutes of help
per song that she received from the vocal coaches
(like the other students) helped her to improve –
until the undermining of her self-confidence from
Reggie (as well as the two regular male judges who
were more interested in creating names for themselves
than being honest) took their toll.

So how did Reggie undermine other students’
self-confidence and manipulate them into voting for
him? Well, it is due to mind control – some people
have the ability to read the conscious thoughts of
others and push them into doing things that they would
be less likely to do otherwise; I have come across
such people on a few occasions in my life. Isaac
Asimov wrote about such people being gathered together
in a conspiratorial organisation called the Second
Foundation in his famous and very influential
Foundation series, to ensure that the plan for a
galactic revolution was adhered to, as I talk about in
my page on Isaac Asimov (see
http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk/isaac-asimov.htm). I
have also set up a discussion group, at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/second-foundation,
relating Isaac Asimov’s literature to the issue of
mind control generally.

I have recently set up the following discussion
groups, to which I am sending this document (as well
as distributing it to many other places and putting it
on my socialist website):

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/comic-relief
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fame-academy
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/konnie-huq-fans
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/oxfam
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fair-trade-hot-chocolate


--
Steve Wallis (http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk).
Initiator of Greater Manchester Democratic Socialist Alliance
(http://www.gmdsa.org.uk, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gmdsa) and Revolutionary
Platform of the Democratic Socialist Alliance
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/revolutionary-platform-of-democratic-socialist-al\
liance).
Member of Glasgow Shettleston branch of the Scottish Socialist Party
(http://www.scottishsocialistparty.org), supporter of the International
Socialist Movement platform of the SSP (http://www.redflag.org.uk) and initiator
of the Revolutionary Platform of the SSP
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/revolutionary-platform-of-the-ssp).
Initiator of the Campaign for Democracy in the UK
(http://www.democracycampaign.org.uk;
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/campaign-for-democracy-in-the-uk) and Campaign for
Sanity in the NHS (http://www.health-service-sanity.org).