Pop Idol's hunger for fame helps overcome debut jitters

IT'S hungry work being a pop idol. "Have you got a menu?" asked Rik Waller as soon as he arrived for his live debut after coming to fame on the television talent show.

Two double fajitas later he did not look like a man who had just signed a pounds 400,000 record deal as he warmed up for his performance at the Roadhouse in Covent Garden.

He looked as if he was about to be sick.

Crippled by stage fright, he stood shaking backstage as his vocal coach calmed him with breathing exercises, while his manager looked on anxiously last night.

The surroundings cannot have helped. Rik barely fitted into the tiny dressing room that he was sharing with the greats: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Sex Pistols and Jimi Hendrix all looking down from framed photographs.

For those who missed the TV show and all its attendant press coverage, Rik was the "larger-than-life" Pop Idol finalist who dropped out with a throat infection after the judges had branded him "too fat" to win.

At the end of a day when Pop Idol winner Will Young was breaking sales records with his debut single, Rik was performing to an appreciative crowd of 100 or so in preparation for his own single release next week. After his performance of I Will Always Love You, he said: "That was the most nerve-racking moment of my life so far!

Inside I was shaking."

After insisting that he had not been hurt by the Pop Idol judges' cruel remarks about his weight, Rik said he wished his former TV rival, Will, "all the best".

"Healthy competition is good but it's not my job to create a rivalry," he said. "It is not my main concern to knock him off the top. If I hit the top spot, it would be absolutely stunning."

Copyright 2002
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.