Of dreams, coats, and reality tv

Reality TV. It sucks you in. Even with my level of cynicism, I’ve been pulled into Any Dream Will Do, and that’s without seeing all of the shows (they’ve been clashing with Doctor Who Confidential, and you only get the cutdown version of that on the repeats).

What I like is that, unlike the ‘other side’, they have judges who really know their stuff. And of course I love John Barrowman, who is always honest and fair in his comments, and if anyone knows what makes a leading man, he does.

I think it was on Eurovision night that I articulated that my favourite was Lee, and once you acknowledge that you care, even in a small way, you’re lost. After that, it became difficult to watch, though he always seemed streets ahead of the others, in actually being able to deliver a performance rather than just sing a song.

Gradually others fell by the wayside, and he was never in the ‘sing off’, and last night it was the final. Three of them, Lewis, the blonde cutie from Boro, who was lovely but a bit young to take such a gamble on. He’ll make it as a result of the show, but this wasn’t his time. He’d frequently been in the ‘sing off’, so I wasn’t surprised to see him go first.

Then we had Lee, and Keith. Keith was a bit of a dark horse, in that he’d never been in the bottom two either. He has a good voice, but his stage presence wasn’t as striking, and he was also, I’m afraid, just a little geeky.

I took comfort from the fact that everyone I’ve spoken to has picked out Lee as the one. He gave a couple of storming performances, of 'New York, New York', and 'Paint it Black' (one of my beefs about the show is that they never give them ‘real’ musical songs to sing until the ‘sing off’. Oh, I know why, but they’re up for musical theatre, not a pop career!)

The final song was a duet with both finalists singing 'Jesus Christ Superstar'. Oh so many emotions watching that, it even made me a little tearful, and Lee was fantastic in it.

And then the announcement – Lee is Joseph – how could I have doubted? I yelled so loudly the cats dived in opposite directions off the sofa and went and hid under the table.

And now, I want to go and see the show. After all, it must be all of 14 years since I saw Philip Schofield do it.