Topsy Turvy

Melbourne. Sunny, windy, icy, balmy Melbourne. Home of the four seasons in one day. You know, they say that if you can’t make it here . . . you audition for Idol. I kid! I kid, because I love! And hey, way to represent, Melbourne! Our cup runneth over with decent to great singers this episode. I know! I know! I am as surprised as you! We had a good singer within the first fifteen minutes! I KNOW!! Melbourne, take a bow and get down with your bad self! And they tried to throw us off the scent by pretending Melbourne was a horror movie, right there on your tv.

Yes, they gave us some dross to start with, like young Andrew who pushes Amazing Grace through his vocal cords like he’s in labour and who has people stop him in the street to tell him how great his singing is. I am not kidding anymore people, you need to keep your frakking mouths shut. Stop randomly telling strangers they can sing, unless you make it FRIGHTENINGLY OBVIOUS that you are kidding. If you need to, literally pull their leg. They might call a member of the constabulary over to deal with the freak who complimented their singing and then started tugging at their trousers, but hey, these are the dangers associated with telling the guy walking down St Kilda beach bellowing at the top of his lungs that he can sing.

Melbourne. Home of beatboxers Zeb and Scott, who manage to beatbox and slate Kyle at the same time. Well played, those chaps!

And then BAM. Idol sucker punches us in the eyes by giving us a decent singer well before previously established timelines have led us to expect them, Natalie Gauci who works her way quite nicely around an original and starts a little Tet Offensive between Dicko and Holden about whether you can win AI doing your own stuff (Dicko takes the negative, Holden the affirmative). She then RIPS out I Will Survive at Dicko when he demands some poppy satisfaction, with a gorgeous little Fuck Off attitude that makes me fall just a teensy bit in love with her. Never uncomfortable on the back foot, Dicko fires BACK that he thinks she’s great and puts a voodoo curse on her by saying he thinks she could win the whole shebang. Somewhere Lisa Mitchell gets goosebumps and needs a hug. Marcia quite rightly (I KNOW!!) points out that she just got the Kiss Of Death and we all flash back to Kyle asking the Semi Final live audience to give Lisa a standing ovation because she’s the best thing this country has ever seen. Ever. Run away Natalie, run quickly away to some reverse voodoo practising doctor!

They show us a bazillion 16 year olds who oversing and are too young for this competition. I wholeheartedly hope that none of them make it to the Top Twelve, unless it’s Karla Tonkich who sings well, even if it is a trifle overdone, but whose stage mum is the Puppet Master and feeds her all her replies to camera – that’s great, can we make sure that if Karla makes Top Twelve that her mum gets to come to all the live performances and makes sure the button in her back that enables her to talk is pressed to ‘on’? Other 16 year old Madison Pritchett is pretty good too and holy crap, that’s THREE decent singers before we hit the half hour mark – what the HELL, Idol?

Then we get Donna, who is so very much not remotely close to the right side of thirty (that is, the right side of thirty for this show, I still maintain they should up the age range from 18 to 35, the famewhore gene doesn’t stop working the day you turn 31 – let My People make fools of themselves too, we want to dress up as banana’s and pirates and sing Oops I Did It Again badly on national telly!!). I know she plays it like she thinks she’s fooling everyone, but I don’t honestly think she really thinks she’s fooling anyone.

Cyndi Dietrich has a quiet, unassumingly pleasant voice but no real ‘thing’ going for her and Dicko asks her to get a PR team on that right away so she can work out who she is musically. I don’t . . . know . . . did she get through? I think she did.

Ahhhh, Mark Holden’s Lessons In How To Be A Passive Aggressive Wanker, Chapter Eightyfive. Julie Ann is an ambitious lass who has sent close on a thousand CDs to any and every one she can think of who might be able to help her out on her way to a career in this biz we call show. I’m not sure if she’s taking the piss when she sings because she’s terribly earnest but not terribly great. Mark unpacks his asshole and pretends to not understand why she hasn’t gotten anywhere. I get a headache grinding my teeth in anger at him. Dicko takes the honest line and tells her that she just ain’t that great. She is the first in a long line of auditionees with pitch problems, tone deaf-ness and general craptitude.

Holy mother of all that is . . . holy. DeadtomeOnetrickponyLee has a motherfucking Clinkers commercial. By the power of Greyskull, will SOMEONE please smite him?

Jack Byrnes sings with some aptitude (he’s not great, but he’s not meh) and is loved by Kyle and Marcia. Dicko calls him fascinating and thinks he has a “journey” in him. I and the other TWoP Biggest Loser posters call shoutout! JOURNEY!!

Anthony Nuku isn’t letting a broken foot hold him back, he BELTS out Hit The Road, Jack and falters only slightly on the big notes. Andrew G tries to kill him by pushing his wheelchair into a line of chairs but its cute and G’s hair is awesome this season so we’ll forgive him anything.

Matthew Morris sings Alanis Morrisette’s Uninvited. Dude needs a haircut and a shopping spree but his voice is delightful. Gosh. There are a lot of good singers this episode, I am confused and slightly alarmed by this . . . is Sydney going to suck big time?

Mark Holden’s Lessons In How To Be A Passive Aggressive Wanker, Chapter Eightysix involves making fun of Siki Daha’s name who looks quite put out by the middle class white guy picking on the kid with dark skin. Instant Karma isn’t just a John Lennon song and Mark is forced to be a decent human being when it turns out Siki can RnB the HELL out of Norah Jones. Siki deposits a nice cold serve of Eat Your Own Words, Dickhead in front of Mark and it is frankly schadenfreudalicous.

Idol sidebars itself to Mildura so we can meet Jesse Curran, the cute blonde who we’ve seen a dozen times already making a Gstring joke. It’s still kinda funny. She sings a song about cleavage and bulges which Mother Marcia is vaguely offended by, although Dicko loves the weird chicks (shades of Chanel finding her note. Good times.) So she sings another song. Look, she has great tone and a gorgeous sound. And she’s funny! I like the funny! Put her through, wankers. Thank you.

Tasmanian Dewayne (really? De. Wayne. Okay.) Everettsmith has a lovely old fashioned quaver in his voice and even kicks out some great high notes with no apparent effort whatsoever. He is restrained and fantastic. I can’t wait to see/hear more of him. This is all looking remarkably good. That concerns me.

Hippie Andrew is dressed like a tree and singing a song about tree felling that makes me want to single-handedly deforest the Amazon.

Ain’t nothing wrong with a boy wearing eye makeup Husny Thalib, don’t let them talk you out of it. Awww, he’s singing Spandau Ballet, I had this tape! He’s actually kind of cute, but I’m getting such a Lee Harding vibe. Marcia wants him to do something more suited to his look, sigh, she wants him to punk, doesn’t she? Marcia, you, of ALL people, should know that eye makeup on boys is the domain of the New Romantics and you don’t get a more eyemakeup wearing, quirky hair styled, pierced ears New Romantic band than Spandau Ballet. Unless you raise me a Duran Duran. At which point, I fold and you win the pot.

Oh good god. The next singer is effing Jacob Butler. He sings Oasis – of course he does – and it is quite good and Dicko calls him a “real find”. A real find? Find? He was on X Factor and made the top 100 of Idol in 2005. Find? Was he misplaced in some way? Did Holden put him down and forget where he left him? Did he fall inbetween the seat cushions? Has he been down there with $3.55 of spare change, some dust bunnies, a battery, the tv guide from the third week of October 2003 and some stale fries? He’s Jakey effing B, he's Holden’s protege. Eh, he’ll probably at the very least make the semi’s this year, otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing quite so damn much of him, right? I don’t mind him that much actually, he has a decent voice - but I will brook no favouritism this damn early in the piece, Holden. No!

Then Idol upends my world once more by showing more bad singers and then failing completely to have the Last Auditionee Of The Day Who Will Totally Surprise You Completely By Getting Through, Not, not appear. They merely inform us that 39 got through from Victoria/Tasmania and that they’ll see us in Sydney.

Oh, and tonight? We get Irish.

I may or may not have squeeeeeed with delight and loosed a huzzah!