The Voice of Reason

This week for the first time: I was a member of a studio audience

Whenever I catch an episode of X Factor, I am always rather envious of the shiny red buzzers that are pressed when the judges are not impressed. Life would be fantastic if we could be born with a similar mechanism that we could put into play every time something displeases us; Nicolas Cage walks on screen - buzz..........my boss asks me to fill out my appraisal form - buzz..........somebody serves me a big plate of goat meat -buzz..........Coldplay - buzz...........

In the latest all-new talent show ,'The Voice', the reverse procedure is the whole principle of the show - the judges have their back to contestants during the auditions and are required to sound their buzzers when they like what they hear, with the goal of each forming a team of the creme de la creme. I have yet to decide if this adds to or takes away from the drama: Would the whole SuBo phenomenon have been toned down if Simon Cowell and co were unable to see Ms Boyle in her full frumpy black tights/white shoes glory before she exercised her lungs?

Whilst still deliberating this, yesterday I found myself in the studio audience for Round Two of Belgium's hottest singing contest. The auditions had all been filmed, the riff-raff eliminated and it was now time to sort out the men from the boys in a series of singing 'duals' performed at the Liege RTBF studios in a faux boxing ring. To my surprise, on arrival there was minimal fuss; I can guarantee that if this had been hosted in the UK, I would have been swimming in a sea of hysterical teens and ducking to avoid stray undergarments flying towards the latest wannabe pop idol of their dreams.

The first couple of hours involved some coaching sessions on how to be the idyllic congenial audience. Apparently polite applause is not enough to create the illusion of an electric atmosphere and we were required to shriek, whoop and wave our arms around like idiots. This was rehearsed repeatedly until our animator was content and we were hoarse (The Voice? I was completely minus my voice when I went home that evening) and then the opening and closing credits were filmed. Days earlier, I had asked a friend her advice on what to wear and she suggested that I should dress in bright colours to be easily spotted in the audience. Remembering the commonly know fact that TV visibly adds 4 or 5 kilos to your body weight, I decided against a psychedelic pattern and opted for a bright but plain coloured dress in the hope of blending in - quite a relief in hindsight, as the cameras were focussed on us way too often for my liking and, frankly, I'm pretty sure I looked a complete ass.

Maureen Rees
Driving School



Maureen Louys
The Voice


The programme is presented by a high maintenance-type leggy blonde, Maureen Louys. For some inexplicable reason, the Belgians seem to think that Maureen is an exotic and glamourous name. Clearly 90's docusoap 'Driving School' was never aired in Belgium.


During the auditions, successful contestants were selected by four celebrity judges/coaches for their teams, and then offered guidance and the benefit of their experience in the music industry. The celebrity judges involved in the Belgian edition of 'The Voice' are 80s bubblegum chanteuse turned raunchy rockstar Lio, yankeedoodle ex-pat smoky blues singer Beverly Jo Scott (her fellow judges refer to her as Bee Gee, which is probably preferable to BJ), Swiss Star Academy success story Quentin Mosimann and somebody called Joshua (I remain blissfully unaware of his claim to celebrity). The following stage of the competition involves four shows dedicated to each judge's team where the contestants battle it out in a duet/dual scenario and half of them get shown the door. The show we were watching focussed on Lio's team.

Once a lot of the faffing was over, noses had been appropriately powdered (I'm talking make-up) and Bee Gee's champagne flute had been topped up for the nth time, the contestants appeared and strutted their stuff around the boxing ring. While generally there was clearly some degree of talent involved, other moments verged on bad karaoke and the professional backing group were pretty sensational and the thing that impressed me the most. In between acts, there was a great deal of shuffling around of the audience so that the two families of the duetting artists had a ring side seat. Our position in the audience meant that at any given time we had one family next to us and the other strategically placed on the row in front. In essence we were in between a rock and a hard place; if we cheered on one contestant, the relatives of the other would potentially want to kill us or vice versa and all the while under the watchful of eye of the animator, insisting that we screamed ourselves blue in the face for every single performance.

At one point there was a rather sweet family to our right and we cheered on their little angel who Lio eventually opted to eliminate. This may well be a decision she will live to regret as his mother turned from nice as pie to Rosemary West in a matter of seconds, threatening a face-off with Lio after the show. I glanced over at her and felt a momentary unpleasant frisson of reminiscence of the public embarrassment of a mother with a score to settle and my heart went out to the poor boy and his red-faced brother sitting a few seats away from me. I half expected the following day's headlines to read "Lio knifed to death by pushy mum" and crossed my fingers that she had the necessary muscle in place within her entourage.

To be fair to Lio, she genuinely had a heavy heart when deciding the fate of the unlucky contenders. Visibly blubbering and melting mascara (bang went another 15 minutes of my day when it had to be reapplied) clearly she is not quite the diva she is made out to be, as she buried her face in a box of Delhaize 365 (supermaket cheapo nasty own-brand) tissues.

Five and a half hours later, thirsty and ready to gnaw off our own arms, we were invited to leave the building, but not before another obligatory congratulatory round of applause/idiotic whooping session.

Random The Voice 'Blind Audition' from Youtube

Would I try this again?:
I'll certainly have to live through it again:

Coming soon to you on a Tuesday night: My ugly mug plastered across your screen in HD.