X-cess all areas

ORNA MULCAHYand daughter go backstage – down the corridors, up the stairs and into the celebrity toilets – at the biggest show on TV. The vast-looking stage is actually small and the sign for the VIP area is a scrap of paper – but it still all has the X factor

‘LOUIS, LOUIS, we’re over here!” Oh, the humiliation when he doesn’t see me waving among the dozens of girls clamouring at the railings. Oh no: he’s turning away and going back inside. “But he knows me,” I tell the security guard, “We’re invited! Seriously!”

We’re outside the X Factor studios, in Wembley in northwest London, and by rights we should be inside. Louis Walsh has invited my 15-year-old daughter, Kate, and me, but as far as security is concerned I’m just another fan – and so no can do.

Although we haven’t been queuing since 5am, like some of the studio audience, we have been hanging around aimlessly in front of a piece of A4 paper pinned up that says “VIPs” and has an arrow going nowhere. We’ve just met these other people who’ve been invited, too: a nice middle-aged man with his pregnant wife and a couple of teenagers. “Who are you, then?” I ask, and he says, “I’m Simon’s nephew.” Ohhhhhhh!

Here’s Louis coming out again. This time he’s coming to collect us. We duck under the barrier, go past a very long queue of people and suddenly we’re in.

The rest of the family is at home, doing what we always do on Sundays. Not Mass but early dinner and then The X Factorresults show for everyone, dog and all. The same thing is happening in homes all over Ireland and Britain. I believe it's the same drill in the Áras. Mary McAleese loves The X Factor. I've been in boardrooms where the talent show is the one subject that gets people going. Fintan O'Toole, I can tell you, knows his X Factor.For 750,000 viewers (in Ireland alone) the Saturday- and Sunday-night shows are the highlights of the weekend.

IT ALL HAPPENS in a grimy little building beside a McDonald’s. Louis is rushing around, trying to get our wristbands sorted. We’re getting the best ones: Day-Glo pink that will allow us access all areas – backstage, down the corridors, up the stairs, into the celebrity toilets, the works.

Well, not quite all areas, as it turns out. Not Simon Cowell’s dressing room and not Cheryl Cole’s dressing room, to be sure. But here’s Louis’s dressing room and there’s a gorgeous black woman at his dressing table, tidying up, and, oh my God, is that Sinitta? It is! “Hi,” she says, “How are you?” Frankly, I’m tongue-tied. Last time I saw her she was in a tented pagoda with Simon in Marbella, choosing their contestants. And here she is talking to us in her spangly swimsuit. Then we meet Louis’s other guests, who include a dark Spaniard with dimples and a man who used to manage Elton John, I think.

How do I know Louis? I don’t is the truth, but a mutual friend introduced us in the Brown Thomas cafe months ago, and he’d casually said, “Come to the live show!” Ever since then Kate and I had been hoping our heads off – and sending him reminders every week. Eventually word came through that we were on the list. And then all we could talk about was who we might see. We’d prepared for the worst-case scenario: seats up the back behind a pillar. A distant view of the back of Simon’s head.

“I’ve no helper tonight,” says Louis, looking frazzled, and we promise to be no trouble at all. Wait in here for a while, he says, pushing open a door. Next thing we’re in the contestants’ canteen, practically on top of One Direction, who are having their tea. “Here, boys,” says Louis, “come and meet Kate.” Or words to that effect. Kate goes white in the face.

Niall, the Irish member of One Direction, jumps up to say hello, and now Harry is helping her to put on her wristband; then Aiden, the intense solo performer with the big eyes and the quiff – her absolute favourite – walks by.

I look around for someone my own age and see Wagner over at the media table, sucking up to a lot of bored-looking showbiz journalists.

And is that Katie Waissel? Hi, she says, throwing her arms around me. I think someone must have told them all to do this. Hug people. But she seems like a nice, normal kind of girl, nicer than we’ve all given her credit for.

Louis reappears and takes us past about five more security men into the studio: it’s all black and a bit grungy and full of people wandering around trailing wires, looking quite bored – which beats me, because there on the stage, a few metres from us, is Rihanna, practising her food-throwing routine.

Louis tells Matthew, the boss of seats, that he wants us to sit in row three, behind his chair. We could nearly go up and sit at the X Factor table, except that Dermot O’Leary, the show’s presenter, is blocking our way. Brian Friedman, the choreographer who wears the knitted hoods, is sitting in Simon’s chair, swinging it from side to side to side.

The chairs and table look a bit small and ordinary. In fact, looking around, it’s all a bit ordinary. The stage that seems vast on TV? It’s not. It’s just your standard theatre stage with fantastic lights. But the doors in the middle are there, and that’s enough for us. “Can you smell it, Mum?” Kate says. “Can you smell the X Factor smell?” I can’t, but she tells me it is so good, better even than Fierce.

“DID YOU MEET CHERYL?” is what everybody asks when we come home. No, we did not. We could have, maybe, if we’d hung around outside her door, which was guarded by no fewer than three assistants. But we were too busy trying to find Mary.

There is no sign of her until we go for a wander and come across the make-up room – and there she is, in her jeans, being fussed over with brushes.

Up close Mary looks like a diva, her head held high, a lovely face. I tell her The Irish Times is behind her all the way. She looks a bit surprised but says, “Thanks very much,” in a lovely deep voice. I forget to ask her all the burning questions, like if it’s true about Wagner and the noise in the house getting to her, and if she’s on a special diet.

Kate has managed to track down the beautiful, classy Rebecca Ferguson, who is very kind to her, and Matt Cardle, who obliges with yet another hug. She has had a long chat with lovely Rebecca Creighton from Belle Amie, and we both get to meet Treyc Cohen, who is bird-sized and has the most beautiful eyes.

Everyone warms up when they hear we are Louis’s guests. But there is something off-putting about Wagner, though he’s taller, thinner and better looking in real life than he seems when he’s sweating profusely into his hair onscreen.

NOW THEY’RE LETTING the public in. This means a stream of girls, who rush forward to the front seats. It’s a bit fishy that they are all young and pretty. “Do you have to send in a photo with your application?” I ask the girls in front of us. No, they say, but you do get filtered. Maybe checked out on Facebook.

We’re all told what to do, of course. There’s a giant of a man in a suit on stage, showing us how to throw our hands up in the air and sway from side to side, and telling us that we must shout and scream for a very long time, just as soon as Dermot says the word “result”.

We’re a bit distracted by all the cool guests who are streaming in late, and I can’t help feeling a bit smug when I see that Simon’s nephew is being led up to the gods. Here come The Wanted, the boy band, passing by our seats, but Kate tells me that no one really cares about them much any more: it’s all about One Direction now.

Finally it’s time. Dermot does a little leprechaun jig in front of the doors a split second before they open. Then they do, and everyone goes mad for the judges. Who come and sit just in front of us. I’m close enough to read Cheryl’s lips and to be a bit critical of her fake-tanned shoulders. She is gorgeous and petite, of course, but when she is not smiling that dreamy smile for the cameras she looks a little severe. Not much banter going on with the others. A touch of the ice queen. Danni and Louis play noughts and crosses when the camera’s not looking.

JON BON JOVI may have sold millions of albums, and we all scream obediently when he sings his old song Living on a Prayer, but the crowd goes totally mad when the contestants come on stage to sing with him – Mary singing Bon Jovi! Good on her.

When it comes to the ad breaks a make-up lady rushes forward to dab Cheryl’s face. Then Cheryl stands up, and a man – sometimes two men – rush forward to hold her hands and help her down the few steps because of her shoes, or maybe because of the malaria. There are grown men near me actually screaming at her to look at them.

Simon too looks different up close. Older, and there’s something a bid odd about the way he walks, as if he’s wearing a body brace, or maybe he pulled something in the gym.

Louis is like an elf dashing around in the ad break, and who’s he shaking hands with over there, behind Brian Friedman? Oh my God it’s Valentino. Yes, the fashion designer, with a whole lot of gorgeous men around him. While the judges are off, people from the audience are allowed to get up and sing, which is hilarious.

It’s not The Late Late Show, though. Only one goody bag is given out, to a girl in front of me, and it contains only a pen and a mug.

Results, ad breaks, sing-off, tears, judges’ verdicts and more tears go by in a flash. Then it’s all over, and the audience streams through one door into the open air while we go off in a different direction, past the gents’ toilets and back into the canteen, where a big buy-your-own-drink party is in full swing.

You can hardly get near Cher Lloyd there are so many fans and TV cameras, but she is sweet to Kate all the same, and much prettier in real life than she is onscreen. There are screams from outside as the fans catch glimpses of all this through an open fire escape.

We try to get back down the corridor to Louis’s dressing room. “We’re on the list, promise,” I tell yet another security guard. He doesn’t believe me. But we do run into the Spaniard with the dimples, who looks a bit dazed. “I just met Cheryl,” he says, and whips out his phone to show us the photo.

“Don’t worry, Mum. At least we met Mary,” says Kate as we head off into the night. She is never, ever taking off that wristband.

The X Factoris on TV3 and UTV at 7.45pm tonight and 8pm tomorrow

Through the roof Why this is the highest-rating series of the show

This series of The X Factoris the most watched in the show's seven-year history, according to TV3, which says that Mary Byrne, the talent competition's Irish finalist, has contributed to the record viewership.

“The interest in Mary and the other Irish participants on the show has definitely boosted audience figures, which are through the roof,” says Maureen Catterson of TV3. “We have had over 800,000 viewers for a recent Sunday-night results show, which are the kind of figures we would be more used to getting nearer the show’s final.”

Between 700,000 and 800,000 Irish viewers have been regularly tuning in for the results show; figures are slightly lower for the Saturday-night programme.

Catterson also attributes the growing interest to the fact that people in Ireland can now vote for their favourites. That viewers here couldn’t vote in previous series was a bone of contention with Irish acts such as Jedward.

“Getting the vote is something we have been working on for a while, and it was a massive coup for us when it happened.”

James Macleod of ITV, which transmits the programme in Britain, says that every show since the programme started in August has broken records. “We are averaging 11.9 million viewers since the show started, and we have seen figures peak at 15 million, which makes it the biggest show on UK television,” he says.

He won't speculate about whether the economic downturn is boosting viewership, as people stay at home with beers and pizzas at the weekend, but he does say that the producers work hard to make each new season bigger and better than the one before – "the viewing figures obviously reflect this, and we are delighted" .

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