Rylan
HE WAS SEEN AS A BIT OF A JOKE WHEN HE APPEARED ON X FACTOR IN 2012, BUT, GIVEN WHERE HE FINDS HIMSELF NOW, IT’S RYLAN WHO’S DOING THE ALL THE LAUGHING...
WORDS: SIMON BUTTON
‘GIVINGA LITTLEXTRA’
TV PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR
Asked if he feels he’s turned things around — from being a national joke to a national treasure in just four years — Rylan’s eyes widen and he exclaims: “Fucking yeah! Are you joking? I’ve worked like a dog to turn it round.”
Flamboyantly fabulous in one crazy outfit after another, it wasn’t his singing that grabbed the attention on X Factor in 2012, it was the makeup and feather boas. “So yes, I was a national joke,” he says, “but I had a job to do and I was doing my job very well,” he states.
WINNERS AND LOSERS: Rylan celebrates winning CBB in 2015, above, but didn’t do so well on X Factor, top
As detailed in his autobiography, The Life of Rylan (as honest and funny a book as the man himself), the producers told him: “You don’t sing, you’re that one” — meaning being the novelty act put through to divide the judges and polarise viewers. Eager to get ahead, he didn’t protest. “I was like: ‘OK, I’ll take it’,” he says of what he saw as a stepping stone to bigger things. And boy was it a stepping stone. He went on to win Celebrity Big Brother and to present both Big Brother’s Bit On The Side and Big Brother itself, plus he’s now co-hosting The Xtra Factor Live, and his chat show Up Late