Tag Archives: Sonia

Countin’ every single minute

Well, maybe not every SINGLE minute, but we are going to attempt a totally live, blow-by-blow account of Reborn In The USA.

Watch in horror and delight as it unfolds here over the next hour-and-a-bit…

20.59: Breathless with anticipation.

21.01: Titles. Getting excited now. Davina enters, pointing.

21.02: Yadda, yadda, yadda.

21.04: David Van Day pretends to feel sorry for Sonia. Retch. Therese looks worryingly like Christine Hamilton.

21.05: Leee John looks fetching in a beret. Gina feigns embarassment about her dress from last week.

21.07: Gina G is first. What will she be wearing? Erm, not very much. Sings first note out of tune. Good work.

21.08: Woman wearing hairnet nods approval. Davina inspects Gina’s arse to check she is wearing pants.

21.11: On the bus, Van Day says he is sorry Sonia has gone home, and laments about the ‘blip’ in his career. But! Sonia is lying in wait for them at their destination. Stick it up ‘em, Sonia!

21.14: She’s such a trooper! Dollar look like they’ve woken up in a bath of ice to find a kidney has been stolen when they realise what has happened.

21.15: It’s Haydon! Fwooorgh.

21.16: Haydon’s vest wins contest. Everyone else disqualified.

21.18: Sonia’s going to give Van Day a piece of her mind after the ads. Hoorah!

21.23: It’s Sonia’s husband! They’re sooooooo cute.

21.24: Dollar reveal ridiculous conspiracy theory about Sonia’s publicity-seeking ways.

21.25: Michelle Gayle’s in the kitchen on the bus. Memories of Hattie Tavernier come flooding back.

21.27: Temporarily blinded by Michelle Gayle’s teeth.

21.28: Backing singers completely drown out rest of song.

21.29: She was quite good, but any more and we would have fallen asleep.

21.30: Dollar are rehearsing. Van Day is fucking awful. He’s hitting all the wrong notes, then trying to blame it on Therese, who is actually right. Therese makes several pointed comments about how there are two of them, not just one. Perhaps she will stab him with a jagged shard of a shattered Mirror, Mirror 12″.

21.32: We don’t care about Peter Cox. Sorry. He sounds like he’s doing karaoke with a bad PA – which, we suppose, is not far off the mark.

21.36: Tony Hadley buys porno mags. Is the sight of Therese and Elkie first thing in the morning not enough to spur Little Tony into action?

21:38: Davina claims Elkie Brooks has had 15 hit albums. Can you name six of them? Or even one of them?

21.39: Elkie’s When Will I See You Again has got that ace 1970s piano backing track that we love. She can go through just for that.

21.41: Davina embarrases gay audience member by getting him to admit he fancies Peter.

21.46: Tony Hadley’s up now, singing If You Don’t Know Me By Now. He looks and sounds exactly like you remember him, and this is strangely comforting.

21.48: Davina’s shouting again. Make her stop. Leeeeeeeeee John is next, singing falsetto. Falsetto is dangerous. We wish he was wearing something more interesting – possibly some kind of pirate’s outfit.

21.51: The ‘talent’ are unhappy with their digs. David hears news from home that Sonia has been slagging off Dollar on her website. They call Sonia ‘desperate’. Pot. Kettle. Black.

21.55: Van Day: “Sonia thinks I’m a nasty piece of work. There’s no evidence to support that.” Well, actually…

21.57: Sonia is staying! We feel sorry for Dollar now. That’s how fickle we are.

21.58: And she’s about a million times better than last week. Go Sonia!

21.59: Sonia’s official website is now cheering when you log onto it! Not that they want to rub it in or anything …

22:03: Exciting developments! Sonia’s official site has leaked how the show ends. If you don’t want to know, stop reading NOW!

Right, for the rest of you: “In tonights thrilling and improved installment of ITV1′s ‘Reborn In the USA’, Sonia not only won the vote but came through the next singing contest leaving Elkie Brooks and Gina G to next weeks vote for Survival.”

22.05: Peter Cox gets the most votes. Pop is dead.

22.07: Well, that’s that. We’re sure Elkie and Gina won’t be slugging it out in the tabloids over the coming week, but you never know. Whatever happens, you know you’re going to read about it here.

22.14: PS – Mark Shaw is now talking about his time on the tour on The Salon. He is being interviewed by those nice but freaky twins.

2013 UPDATE: The Guardian TOTALLY stole that whole liveblog idea from me.

Every dog has her Van Day

We’re very much looking forward to Born in the USA. There’s something about packing a load of old has-beens in a bus and sending them to a different continent that’s got enormous appeal.

The element that’s delighting us the most is that the show will feature the original Dollar line-up. lowculture was discussing the changing fortunes of the former members with some colleages just a few short months ago, when we managed to convince a particularly gullible friend that one of them was running a bric-a-brac emporium in Southend called Thereze’s Bazaar.

Anyway, nearer the time we will be taking bets on which fellow performer will be first to give David Van Day a slap (our money’s on Sonia – we wouldn’t like to get in a fight with her).

2013 UPDATE: Sonia and David Van Day did indeed hate each other on sight.

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We will never, no no never, lo-ove again

Flicking through the local paper yesterday, we came across the top 10 from ten years ago this week.

We were horrified to realise that a whole decade has passed since the lovely Sybil was at No.2 with the mighty The Love I Lost.

To celebrate, we’re proud to present the original single cover, just for you. Seeing it again reminded us of how sorry we used to feel that whoever did the sleeves at PWL went to increasingly elaborate lengths to avoid showing too much of Syb’s face.

And was there some sort of rule that female solo artists with first names beginning with ‘S’ produced by Pete Waterman were not allowed to use their surnames? Mind you, Sybil Lynch, Sonia Evans and Sinitta Malone don’t have quite the same ring to them, do they?

If anyone knows where Sybil is now, please get in touch. If lowculture ever comes into money, we plan to buy her for our collection.

2013 UPDATE: It is now 20 years. Fucking hell. Sybil found this post after Googling herself and sent me a lovely email telling me what she had been up to, and I felt really bad for saying that bit about her face.

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