Aiden Grimshaw remembers life after The X Factor
Amy introduced the show from Indiana with the story of being mistaken for Harry Styles at an anime convention in Chicago. A group of excited girls asked for a photograph and refused to believe she was not the One Direction singer, despite Amy being a 24-year-old American woman. She eventually posed for them and attempted an English accent that Scott suggested she could use to get into clubs. Matt from Lincoln then called to say strangers regularly mistook him for Harry too, and admitted he rather enjoyed the attention.
Aiden Grimshaw joined Scott to talk about returning with his own music nearly two years after The X Factor. He remembered the programme as an intense bubble in which he had gone from working at Pizza Hut to appearing on television every week. Although he would not repeat the experience, he recognised that it had given him the opportunity to build a career and spoke warmly about still seeing Matt Cardle, who lived nearby and shared his local pub.
Aiden had spent a year and a half trying different producers before making his album with Jarrad Rogers. He said that process had helped him discover what did not work, as well as giving him much more control than he had enjoyed on The X Factor. His sudden shifts in visibility still amused him: he had gone from unknown to famous, then lost his quiff and found people no longer recognised him in the street.
The questions from his “Grimlings” covered his adopted zebras, his visit to an Ultimate Power Ballads night and his reluctance to appear in his own video because he became sweaty around cameras. Two listeners had adopted zebras for him, although he could not remember their names or where they lived, leading Scott to describe him as a terrible absentee father. Aiden hoped to play live later in the year and was excited by the response to his first single.
Elsewhere, Scott discussed making matching shirts for a weekend in Newquay and wondered whether he could crash a more glamorous Diamond Jubilee street party than the one outside his own house. Charlie Sloth reported from the newly launched Radio 1 and 1Xtra Hackney Academy, where figures from music, television and business were advising young people about their careers. The Friday edition ended with Danny Howard joining Oh, What’s Occurring? to guess the last text messages received by people on Stupid Street.
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