One Chance (26 page)

I couldn't believe it. Here I was, a thirty-six-year-old overweight man with dodgy teeth, and Simon was telling me this. Was I dreaming?

It was time to give my winner's performance. For the first
time in the final I felt relaxed, and to me the performance felt like the best of the whole series.

It was the start of a crazy night. Afterwards, I was reunited with Julz, and we were both taken to the ITV2 studio to speak with Stephen Mulhern. After a fun interview, as interviews with Stephen always are, we headed back to the bar area and had a few drinks. The whole family was there, but after a while I went back up to my dressing room. I just needed to get my own space for a few seconds, to pause and take stock of what had just happened. It still hadn't sunk in.

By the time I came back down a lot of the crowd had gone, and we all headed back to my hotel. The bar was still open, and with the little money I had remaining I bought a round of drinks. I was pretty much skint after the evening, but for once I had a devil-may-care attitude. I had just won £100,000, so surely things would now be a bit easier. It was a great night, though I was aware that Julz and I had an interview to do in the morning with breakfast television show
GMTV
. We had to be up at five to get in the car at five thirty to head to the studios on the South Bank. Before we knew it, it was four in the morning and we were still up! Julz fell asleep as soon as we reached our room; it seemed that in no time the alarm went off.

The next few days were a blur. I had a never-ending round of interviews and photographs to do, plus my very first press conference. This was a very new experience for me, and it became immediately apparent that I would need to adapt or else become overwhelmed. It was very daunting, and I felt a little besieged; it was difficult to stay grounded and avoid being swept up in the moment. Just as I had not allowed the negative things that had
happened in my life to affect who I was, I couldn't allow this upturn in my circumstances to change me, either.

While I was busy with all this in London, Julz returned to Wales. I needed her to post my passport, as I discovered I was flying to New York, and also we needed to speak to our bank. Despite having just won £100,000, we were down to only a few pounds and needed to arrange an overdraft to see us through the next few weeks. The bank refused the request, even being rude to Julz in person when she went into the Port Talbot branch of Barclays. I vowed that once the winning money arrived we would change our bankers.

On Tuesday morning, I flew to New York. It was the first time I had ever travelled business class, and I couldn't believe it. There appeared to be acres of space in my seat, and a great pair of headphones to watch the in-flight movie. When we arrived, we went to a store where they altered a suit for me to wear the next day. I was to perform “Nessun Dorma” at Rockefeller Plaza, live on NBC's
Today Show
, which was a huge honour.

I toured the city with a journalist and photographer for
News of the World
. As we made our way round, we were followed by a crowd of paparazzi, which I found funny. They would poke their heads out from behind a building, a camera flash would fire, and then they would dart away again. It was a long, tiring day, and after a shoot round Times Square and dinner, it was well after midnight before I got back to my hotel. It was after two in the morning when I fell asleep fully clothed on the bed, having forgotten to set an alarm.

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New York is a bustling place, and one of my favourite cities in the world. It was on this trip that I discovered this buzzing city with a real heartbeat. I saw lots of things in a short period of time: Times Square, Central Park—and we went to the top of the Rockefeller Center, the famous Top of the Rock, with the most amazing view over the city.

Once again, I had an early start. I had to be up at four thirty for a five thirty sound check on Rockefeller Plaza. Thankfully, my body clock was aware, and I awoke at exactly the right time. I showered, changed into fresh clothes, and strolled across to the plaza. I was overawed that I was playing on the same stage that one of Julz's heroes, Bon Jovi, had performed on only a few days before. It was a crisp and sunny June morning and there was a great atmosphere in the area. Lots of people had turned out to watch. I got to meet some of them, shake their hands, and for the first time, sign autographs.

For an outside area, the acoustics were great. The tall buildings surrounding us channelled the sound around the area. It felt surreal, singing in New York and being watched by millions of Americans across the country. But it also felt blissful to be standing there doing what I loved doing. Was I dreaming? I didn't know. All I did know was that it felt great, and if it was a dream, I didn't want to wake up.

Simon Cowell was true to his word about the album recording. While I was in New York, I was given a personal CD player along with a CD of suggested songs for the record: these included Italian-language versions of “Everybody Hurts” and Ennio Morricone's “Nella Fantasia.” I listened to it to get a feeling for the
material, though didn't have much time. I was booked into a studio back in London on the Sunday, a week after the final, as Simon had promised.

I returned to London and was put up in the Conrad Hotel in Chelsea Harbour. This was to be my home for the next seven weeks, on and off. It was an all-suite hotel, beyond five-star and beyond what I was used to. I had come to the point where I needed some laundry doing, and when I looked at the price of washing, my eyes almost popped out of their sockets. Five pounds to wash a pair of underpants? Ten pounds to wash a T-shirt? I didn't have a T-shirt with me that cost that much! In fact, the one I was looking to put in only cost me two pounds!

I worked with three different producers on my debut record,
One Chance
. There was Nigel Wright, whom I had worked with on
Britain's Got Talent
, and also two Swedish double acts: Per Magnusson and David Kreuger, who have also worked with artists such Leona Lewis, Josh Groban, and Celine Dion; and Andreas “Quiz” Romdhane and Josef Larossi, known as Quizlarossi, who had worked with Il Divo, Kelly Clarkson, and Diana Ross. I didn't have a lot of time to get to know them, as it was very intense.

Recording an album was an alien idea to me, and although I had been in a radio station before, this was the first time I had been in a recording studio. To me, the mixing desk looked like the controls for a spaceship. I didn't know how things were normally done in recording sessions and knew that as a newcomer, especially one untried and untested, I was very much the junior partner in the whole process. I had learned in life to pick my battles carefully, and apart from asking for sheet music rather than just lyric sheets, I didn't push for too much.

The different producers had different ways of going about things. I wasn't sure about the repetitive style of recording everything line by line preferred by the Swedish producers. To me it felt like I wasn't getting a proper feel of the whole piece. With Nigel, I had a chance to record the whole piece in a single take, stopping only later to pick up individual phrases to polish. Nigel's approach felt more natural and also more classical. However, I knew that until I proved myself, I would have to go along with others' ways of working. In later recordings, I changed my recording style to singing passes of the whole piece, going back later to pick up individual phrases as necessary.

The days were long; my first day's recording took over fourteen hours, with only a few breaks for refreshment and lunch. Some of the backing tracks were already recorded, and some tracks I recorded first with the orchestra and then immediately after to the orchestral recording. The next day I told Yvie that despite my lack of formal training, I must have some technique, as otherwise I was sure I would not be able to talk, let alone sing! I wanted to do as well as I could, bearing in mind the time restrictions and the fact I was new to the business and learning my way.

There was no time to lose: the final of
Britain's Got Talent
had been on 17 June, and the album was due for release on 16 July. We recorded the main part of the album in just eight days. I was happy overall with the results, and was particularly happy with “Nessun Dorma,” which needed only a few takes to get done to both mine and the producer's satisfaction. It was a strange feeling when I got my hands on a finished copy—again, I had to pinch myself to prove this was really happening.

Shortly before the album's release, I returned to Wales for my first public performance in the UK since winning. Another classical singer local to the area, Katherine Jenkins, was performing Katherine in the Park at Port Talbot's Margam Castle, and I was invited to perform “Nessun Dorma.”

The following week,
One Chance
was released. It went straight in at number one, selling over 128,000 copies and going gold immediately. The record outsold the rest of the top ten put together, and would stay at the top of the charts for three weeks. It would go on to hit number one round the world, including Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and South Korea. I was amazed and humbled that so many people had bought my album. It seemed very strange that only a few weeks before, I was serving people in Carphone Warehouse, but now they were actually buying my album!

The pace of those first few weeks after winning
Britain's Got Talent
didn't let up. Even when I had time off, I still found myself singing and performing. I discovered that Quex Park in Margate, where I had performed as a guest with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, was hosting another concert in aid of the Cancer Care charity at Margate's Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital. Remembering the promise I had made in 1999, I called Albie Park and offered my services free of charge in aid of the charity. Albie was delighted that I'd remembered, and I returned to perform on another beautiful Kent evening.

I had a trip to Hamburg, which was the first of many to Germany. I met people who would become friends: Dave “Shacky” Shackleton, vice president of Sony UK's international
department, and Vivian Hauner, the head of TV promotion for Sony Music in Germany. Since I had studied German at school, I did my best to speak as much German as I could remember from my lessons twenty years earlier. It was a short visit, as I needed to return to the studio to record some Christmas songs for the US edition of the album, and also a special Christmas edition of the record for release elsewhere.

During the recording of this extra material, and perhaps not surprisingly given my schedule, I developed a cold. The show, though, had to go on, and I was fighting a sore throat as I flew to Prague to record a music video at the State Opera House. Again I sang for over twelve hours. Normally, music videos are partly lip-synced and partly “sung out”—although the sound is never actually recorded. I had asked about only lip-syncing, despite the recording being in a major opera house, and misunderstood the request to only sing out the closeups, and instead sang all the way through. The lights were hot and bright, and at times I felt sure I knew what a spit roast felt like!

We'd had a very early start, leaving the hotel at seven and not arriving back until after two the following morning. Far from getting any rest, I had to be up again in a few hours to travel to Norway. I was due to perform in Oslo on the shores of the Oslo Fjord, and then onwards to Stockholm for more recording. In Norway, I felt something was not quite right with my voice during my performance of “Nessun Dorma.” The following morning my throat was getting scratchy, although it wasn't painful, but after spending a little time recording in Stockholm I could feel it was going completely.

I woke up the following morning, barely able to speak at all.
This was a very bad time to lose my voice: I had a concert in Carlisle and also trips to the other side of the world to come. I went to see an ENT specialist, who prescribed antibiotics and a small dose of oral steroids to help bring the inflammation down. But even so, I had to withdraw from the concert in Carlisle and from promotion trips to Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

Even though I couldn't sing, the promoters asked me to go to Carlisle, as they were worried they'd be accused of misleading the public if I wasn't there. Carlisle Live was an all-day concert, headlined by Westlife, with a star-studded lineup playing to twenty thousand fans. I travelled up in a private jet, something I had never experienced before. I was surprised by how small it was and how luxurious it
wasn't
. It was designed for convenience, not comfort. The one advantage was that the pilot negotiated a gentle take off and approach to help with the pressure imbalance in my ears. I flew with the other acts, amongst them the friendly Shayne Ward and the very chatty Louis Walsh, Westlife manager and
X Factor
judge. Louis was interesting, but relentless. He had a lot of views on the business and what I should record in the future. Some I agreed with; others I didn't.

I had been told to stay quiet, and that if I wanted to say something, to speak up rather than whisper (whispering forces air through the vocal cords, so it tires them quicker). I went onstage and explained in very croaky tones that I was unable to perform due to losing my voice. The audience understood, and I made my way over to meet those who'd paid for VIP access tickets. Bearing in mind that I was ill, I was offered the opportunity to go to the large house, which served as the artists' private area, but I felt that as I was being paid a fee, I should make myself
available for as long as possible. It was clear that I needed a break.