Channel Hop

Once upon a time, if you wanted to sing on British television there were three ways you could go about it. The first was to join a band, write some songs, top the charts and appear on Top of the Pops, The Old Grey Whistle Test or, later, MTV. The disadvantages of this method, however, were that it was time consuming and required liberal amounts of commitment, luck and, not least, talent. Unless, of course, you happened to be Michael Bolton.

The second avenue involved making a desperate plea to a sinister old man, who would, if you were lucky, rattle his ostentatious jewellery and wave his enormous cigar in your face while crowing 'now then, now then', before ultimately 'fixing it for you'. Unfortunately, having your letter picked out by Sir Jimmy Savile on his wish-fulfilment show, Jim'll Fix It, required even more luck than the first option, although lack of talent was not necessarily a problem.

The third choice was to join a church choir and wait for rotund former Goon Sir Harry Secombe to make his way to your parish with his Christian-hymn show Songs of Praise. This method required a degree of talent, some conservative plaid clothing and a large dose of patience, but more importantly, as George Michael correctly sang, you 'gotta have faith'.

At some point, however, something changed. Talent shows, an ever-faithful staple of any network's weekend line-up, suddenly began to capture the public's imagination. Devised by music and television producer Simon Fuller, 2001's Pop Idol was a sensation on British television, grabbing a huge ratings share and making household names of Will Young, Gareth Gates and Darius Danesh.

A slew of imitators soon followed, while Fuller took the original show global with identical incarnations in a number of countries, most notably the US, which was blessed with American Idol.

Since then, television has changed dramatically, with reality programming becoming ever more prevalent and offering any Tom, Dick or Harriet the chance to fulfil their dreams of stardom on the small screen. One of the more recent, and intriguing, developments in this area was last year's Rock Star, on Star World. The show, in essence a more rocking version of American Idol, offered 15 lucky contestants the chance to become the lead singer of Australian outfit INXS, with winner J.D. Fortune going on to perform alongside the band at packed stadiums around the world.