Pod Insights Great Company with Jamie Laing RYLAN CLARK: I Played the Fame Game on The X Factor | GREAT MOMENTS About this episode Cast your mind back to the early 2010s when paparazzi shots ruled the front pages, and reality TV was turning ordinary people into stars overnight. From Big Brother and The X Factor to TOWIE and Made in Chelsea, our generation grew up at the peak of fame culture, raised on the idea that being famous was the ultimate dream.
Few people embody that era quite like Rylan Clark.
We first fell in love with Rylan when he appeared as the ‘novelty act’ on The X Factor in 2012. From there, he went on to win Celebrity Big Brother, host TV primetime shows and is now BBC Radio 2 royalty, carving out a career that most could only dream of.
In this Great Moment, Rylan opens up about his lifelong fascination with fame and how playing 'the game' on The X Factor helped him make the most of the competition.
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THE CREDITS
Producer: Helen Burke
Assistant Producer: Issy Weeks-Hankins
Video: Jake Ji
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Transcript 0:02 Speaker 00 Hello everyone, I'm Jamie Laing and this is Great Moments.
0:09 Speaker 00 Hello everyone, this is Great Moments, where I share some of my favourite moments from my conversations on great company. Something that's made me think, made me laugh, or changed my perspective. And hopefully, hopefully there's something in it for you too. So are you ready? Let's get into it.
0:28 Speaker 00 I don't think you remember this, but I remember this.
0:30 Speaker 01 When we slept together.
0:31 Speaker 00 Yeah, do you remember that?
0:32 Speaker 01 Not really.
0:32 Speaker 00 Okay, well, my memory's a bit hazy.
0:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
0:35 Speaker 00 It's a little bit hazy.
0:36 Speaker 01 You weren't the only one.
0:38 Speaker 00 Do you remember this moment when we were in the car together? We weren't in the car together, I was in the car and I was singing a song. See, you don't-
0:47 Speaker 01 I think I do remember this.
0:48 Speaker 00 Do you remember this? We were singing a song, I think it was like a Britney Spears song or whatever it was. And I was singing along like this and it was something like, "Hit me baby one more time."
0:57 Speaker 01 Oh my god, sorry, I thought Britney was here.
0:58 Speaker 00 I know, she is. And I looked to my right and I pull up to you and you're singing exactly the same song with me. And I was like-
1:07 Speaker 01 Oh my god, was that you? I've been looking for you for years. I never realised, I thought I was meant to be.
1:11 Speaker 00 And you're going, "Hit me baby one-" I swear to god. And you look at me and went-
1:19 Speaker 00 And just drove, and I was like-
1:21 Speaker 01 I hate myself.
1:22 Speaker 00 Honestly, I remember this, so you don't remember this?
1:24 Speaker 01 This definitely sounds like me, yeah.
1:25 Speaker 00 I didn't realise that your real name is Ross.
1:30 Speaker 01 Who fucking told you that?
1:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, my real name's Ross.
1:35 Speaker 00 Ross Richard Clark.
1:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, dick in the middle.
1:39 Speaker 00 Born 25th of October, same year that I was born, but we're not going to say that year.
1:43 Speaker 01 Eighty-eight.
1:44 Speaker 00 Yeah, you said it fine, eighty-eight.
1:46 Speaker 01 Someone's been on Wikipedia, haven't they? Nice to see the researchers in here.
1:50 Speaker 00 When did you change your name to Ryland?
1:52 Speaker 01 Well, I never legally changed it.
1:53 Speaker 00 Did you not?
1:54 Speaker 01 I'm still Ross.
1:56 Speaker 01 But yeah, it was when I was about sixteen, seventeen. I was working in River Island.
2:00 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:00 Speaker 01 And at the same time I was modelling, because I've always been like forty foot tall. And I did a modelling job for this concierge company at Canary Wharf. And it was basically the most naff photo shoot of like me with a bunch of flowers knocking on a door. "Here you go madam", like- That awful style of like muggy picture. And my modeling agency at the time said, our Ross is a boring name. We're going to call you Kealan. I went, all right, yeah, fine, whatever.
2:27 Speaker 00 Sorry, they said they were going to call you Kealan.
2:28 Speaker 01 Kealan was my name. K E E L A N.
2:31 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:32 Speaker 01 And so I did this job all day. Everyone's calling me Kealan. And at the end of the day, back then, that's how old we are, they paid you by cheque. But the cheque wasn't a written cheque, it was a printed cheque from like a company. And it was made up to Mr. K Clark. And I was so embarrassed to go up to this woman who'd handed me this cheque and say, I'm really sorry, can you change this cheque because my name's not Kealan, it's Ross. I never ended up cashing the cheque.
2:57 Speaker 00 Shut up.
2:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, because I was that embarrassed. And back then, it was like 200 quid, a lot of money, it still is now. And the next day I was back at River Island on my lunch break, opposite was WH Smith. I went in, picked up a baby book, went straight to R because I thought it was going to have to be the same initial as my name if I get paid by cheque again. And I saw Ryland and I went, oh, that sounds like Kealan. Shut the book and then walked out.
3:15 Speaker 00 Get out of here. There's no ways.
3:18 Speaker 01 True.
3:19 Speaker 00 You literally opened up and that said, that's why I wanted to.
3:20 Speaker 01 I think it was like a thousand and one baby names. Yeah.
3:23 Speaker 00 Have you, have you always been this kind of charismatic, kind of larger than life character?
3:28 Speaker 01 I mean, I've always been the same person, but there's definitely like two of me. Like I think I'm pretty boring.
3:35 Speaker 00 Really?
3:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think I'm a bit of a bore.
3:38 Speaker 00 You're not a bit of a bore.
3:39 Speaker 01 I am, but our agent is over there nodding his head. I'm, I'm not this like party boy that everyone thinks I am.
3:45 Speaker 00 Yeah, but I don't think you're a party boy, but like, I, I would say this, like, I definitely, there are, there are, there are so many sides to everybody, right? Like people would say, there's one side with your family, there's one side with your friends, there's one side you're at work and there's one side, maybe you're in your relationship. And you definitely sort of, you know, especially.
4:01 Speaker 01 They've got Big Ben, four faces.
4:03 Speaker 00 Yeah, exactly. But also in this like life of like presenting in TV, you kind of have to have.
4:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, like Ryland is a bit of a character.
4:10 Speaker 00 Really?
4:10 Speaker 01 Definitely, yeah. But it's a lot of Ross, but like Ross on crack. Yeah.
4:15 Speaker 00 But as a kid though, growing up.
4:17 Speaker 01 Oh, I was that like ginger kid that was like feisty little bastard. Yeah, I'd be the one at like family parties, like getting up on the chair and doing a little routine, spice goes. While my brother's sitting there going, fuck it, I wish you liked football.
4:31 Speaker 00 So you're young, you're living in Essex and you you go to this, you go to this, you get, go to this school, which is probably one of the best schools.
4:39 Speaker 01 At the time, it was the top school in the country.
4:41 Speaker 00 It's the top school in the country.
4:43 Speaker 01 I was like this really bright kid.
4:45 Speaker 00 Were you?
4:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:46 Speaker 00 Did you know what you wanted to do?
4:48 Speaker 01 And I always wanted to be a pop star. And then I I I knew I was gonna be famous, but I didn't know what for.
4:58 Speaker 00 Get out of here.
4:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, I know. Like in, even in my yearbooks.
5:01 Speaker 00 This is so funny.
5:02 Speaker 01 I remember in in the yearbook for boys, it was I won most likely to be famous.
5:06 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
5:07 Speaker 01 And in the yearbook for the girls, I was in that one as well, obviously. And I can't remember what it was. I think it was most likely to end up on TV or something like that.
5:15 Speaker 00 Do you know what's so funny? I I for some reason, because we're the same age, like fame was like the most like exciting thing you could.
5:21 Speaker 01 Because of the era we grew up in.
5:23 Speaker 00 But why is that?
5:24 Speaker 01 So when we were at secondary school, which was like two thousand to two thousand and five, that era is when things like reality TV really kicked off.
5:33 Speaker 00 Yeah.
5:33 Speaker 01 So things like Big Brother, I'm a Celebrity even, things like that. And it just showed you, especially Big Brother, that anyone could become a superstar. You know, we'd grown up previous to that with people like film stars, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Hanks.
5:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
5:50 Speaker 01 That are like celebrities. We didn't have social media. We didn't have none of that. And then the Spice Girls come along and they were British girls that had taken over the world. And you're like, wow, like they're celebrities. Then all of a sudden, you've got like the likes of Jade Goody and people like that, this reality star that come through. And all of a sudden, you look at as an absolute celebrity. They are, in your head at that age, on the same level as someone like the Spice Girls or Tom Hanks. Because they are everywhere. They're earning so much money. They're celebrities. And there was this thing in my head, like I was always obsessed with Big Brother. And that whole concept of a world within a world, like this. Artificial bubble that's been created like I used to love the Truman Show, the film like all of that.
6:35 Speaker 01 And it's all these like little drip feeds at our age that started making me go, well, I could do that. And I remember it was years, it would have been Big Brother four, so two thousand and three. So it would have been year nine, year nine, we went on a school trip to the Isle of Wight. And at that point, Big Brother four had just started and I printed the Big Brother four eye off in the I T lab and stuck it on my suitcase. And I remember getting on the train to go to school.
7:01 Speaker 00 Such a weird thing to stick on a suitcase.
7:04 Speaker 01 Weird, but it was almost like I was like crafting my future.
7:09 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
7:09 Speaker 01 So like physically doing it and obviously I did, ended up going in Big Brother, I got those suitcases and won.
7:16 Speaker 00 I'm gonna get into that, but it's this fascination with fame. I'm so, I'm so glad, I don't know why it was our age, like I remember seeing Britney Spears. On TV and just being obsessed with like.
7:27 Speaker 01 Maybe for different reasons.
7:28 Speaker 00 For different reasons, but I, but I was obsessed and I also like, I used to go to bed at night and it wasn't.
7:34 Speaker 01 Where are you going with this?
7:35 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, yeah, thinking of Britney Spears. Um, no, but I used to go to bed at night and I remember I used to like dream about like being on stage and performing. And so many of the guys that I knew were thinking the same. We had this obsession with being famous.
7:47 Speaker 01 But there is.
7:48 Speaker 00 Cause it was like untouchable.
7:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's a group now though. There is a group of us and we're all a very similar age that are doing not the same things. But we're all in it in some respect and whether people, I'm just very honest, but whether people want to admit that it's. Thinking back to those times, that childhood that we had and then teenage years, which are the years that shape you.
8:10 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah.
8:11 Speaker 01 Don't get me wrong, people later on in life, they could be in their forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, might have a massive career change or change the path of their life because of circumstance. But there is a lot of us in the industry that we both work in now that are of a very similar age that are all doing. The best way to describe it is an event. Let's say there's an event that everyone wants to go to. There is a group of our age people that are standing there all together. And it's because we all grew up in that era of, I could do that. Like, all that this is showing me is that that could be me. And that's when you had these new avenues to be who you wanted to be. You know, you found fame on a reality show.
8:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
8:50 Speaker 01 I found fame on a reality show.
8:52 Speaker 00 Yeah, but I was, I was, I at the beginning of it was, I didn't want people to think that I was doing it because I wanted to be famous.
8:58 Speaker 01 You didn't want?
8:59 Speaker 00 Yeah, but I didn't, yeah, but I did think it, right?
9:02 Speaker 01 Of course.
9:02 Speaker 00 Yeah, of course. It's a reality show about being posh because I thought it'd be fun to be famous.
9:06 Speaker 01 Exactly.
9:07 Speaker 00 But I tried to make every excuse under the sun to be, no, it was because this and because of that. And I thought.
9:11 Speaker 01 Of course.
9:12 Speaker 00 Yeah.
9:12 Speaker 01 Because, you know, you see someone on TV, it's like, I just want to be famous. You think, prick.
9:16 Speaker 00 Yeah, but you, you were never, you never tried, I don't think you ever tried to make an excuse.
9:21 Speaker 01 No, I was like, I know what I want to do and I'm gonna do it. And.
9:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, you always were just like, no, that's why I want to be famous.
9:26 Speaker 01 I was like, I want to be famous. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a very different story now, but when I was on X Factor, I had a job. X Factor was a job to me, a hundred percent. And I knew, am I the best singer in the world? No. Can I do as good as other people on here? Yeah, I can. And when the process started happening and I started going through and I saw the way they were treating me different to this guy here and that girl there, I was like, okay. And it's, I just started playing the game early and you realise in, especially in reality TV, as much as people don't like to go on about stereotypes, bullshit, there is a box for absolutely everyone. If I'm the producer or I'm the exec or I'm the head of the channel, I've got a chart.
10:08 Speaker 01 It's a little bit like when you see on these reality shows, the pictures and the Polaroid. That's where it is and you want the gay one, you want the joke act, you want the good looking guy, you want the sweet innocent girl. You want that. It's actually that. Yeah, you're completely right. And I knew, well, I'm not the good looking guy, I'm not.
10:27 Speaker 00 Come on.
10:28 Speaker 01 The boy band boy.
10:29 Speaker 00 Come on.
10:29 Speaker 01 No, I knew what I was. I knew what my box was.
10:32 Speaker 00 You were filling quite a lot of those boxes. I think good looking.
10:38 Speaker 01 But yeah, I knew what my job was and I thought I can either stand here and sing and last two or three weeks of the live shows, or I give the machine exactly what it needs to be fed and hopefully last a little bit longer and eight weeks later, wait, there I was.
10:52 Speaker 00 Yeah, but that's amazing that you realise that. When I did Main Chelsea, I did not realise how much of a game it was.
10:58 Speaker 01 I was the joke, but I knew I was the joke, so I was in on it. That's the difference.
11:03 Speaker 00 Fucking hell, that's so much awareness.
11:04 Speaker 01 Whereas looking before me, you know, not mentioning any names, but especially on X Factor, there are people that get that far, or actually not as far as me, I was the one that got that far, but there were people that got to those live shows that we'd all perceive as the public as the joke act, but they didn't believe they were the joke act. They thought they were the next Lady Gaga, or they thought they were the next Madonna. When in fact, from day one, I was like, I'm not the next Lady Gaga, I know I'm the joke. Well, let's play the game.
11:30 Speaker 00 Where does that self-awareness come from? Because that's...
11:32 Speaker 01 The era we grew up in, the era we grew up in. I just got there earlier.
11:36 Speaker 00 Yeah, but that self-awareness, realising that, because it's every bit of your emotion wants to, typically as humans, we'll just go, I'm not the joke act, this is, I'm good, I'm great, I'm this and that. But you kind of leant into it and were like, no, this is what it's going to be.
11:49 Speaker 01 Because I knew I wasn't as good as Dave, three people along. I knew I wasn't as good as that. You know, I was on there with like James Arthur, I was on there with Ella Henderson, I was there with Lucy Spragan, Uni and Jay, do you know what I mean? All of these people that were incredibly talented singers, I knew I wasn't as good technically a singer as them. I knew I was better than what I was doing on a Saturday night on X Factor, and so did all of they. So when you watch X Factor back and week one, obviously I'm in the bottom two and get saved, week two, when I got saved by the public for the first time on them live shows, just look at every single other contestant's reaction, because they were more happier for me than I was, because they were like, fucking brilliant, like, because they knew, they were
12:34 Speaker 01 all in with me, they knew I could sing. I shared a bed with James for like six weeks.
12:38 Speaker 00 Did you really?
12:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, and we used to sing in bed like pretty much every night, like, he made up this song about me called Rylander, and we all, even now, whenever we speak, he's like, Rylander, and I'm like, Rylander, like, it's just like piss take.
12:49 Speaker 00 You and James Arthur shared a bed?
12:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, we were like bro man, central, I love that man. You know, he's like a brother to me and so is Jermaine, like we were the Shersey Boys, we always will be.
13:02 Speaker 02 Do da da, do da da, do da da, do da da, do da da, do da da, do da da da. Do da da, do da da, da da da.
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