Pet Cactus on TV

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During Adam's brief visit to Scotland, there was plenty of excitement over whether he would wear it like a true Scotsman, i.e. commando. Well, he was kind enough to tweet us a photo of him rocking the #glamkilt and spiky sporran “It's like having a cactus - a little pet cactus” over tartan leggings. For those of you who'd never heard of it, a sporran is a little manbag to make up for the kilt's lack of pockets, and this spiky one was a gift from some of his fans. I love the hair, which is my favourite effortless-looking style so far. The only thing I would change about his outfit are his boots. The leather on them looks to be beautiful in quality but I think he would have done better to go with something heavier and clunkier because when I look at his lower half, it reminds me of a schoolgirl's uniform!

It may seem like a huge contrast, seeing a handful of dedicated fans as opposed to the scores who lined up on the previous stops to greet Adam, but there are a number of reasons for this. The tour takes in many cities, information revealing his schedule has been last-minute, but the main reason is he's still a relative unknown. Let me tell you about the exposure Adam has had so far. In the UK (population 60 million), we have five terrestrial channels; BBC1, ITV, Channel4, BBC2 and Five, (in order of audience size) which virtually everyone has access to. There are regional variations but altogether, they make up well over half the viewing share. American Idol is shown on ITV2 which has less than a 2% share. To put things into perspective, our most popular soaps draw in regular audiences of 10 million. Last year's X-Factor consistently drew in 10-15 million each week with the final peaking at 16 million. Last year's American Idol regularly drew in less than half a million, with the final at less than 850,000. We can see therefore, that the size of the AI audience is less than 5% of that of the X-Factor. 2012 was a box office success but the audience reach of cinema is comparatively small. So along with a couple of written articles, this was the only exposure Adam has had prior to now. His first single and first album are yet to be released.

Adam's music has now been featured on 4Music, the music channel with the biggest viewing share (though this stands at only 0.3%). Its most popular artists are spotlighted on Channel4 in the 4Music series where they have their own dedicated slots (we need to make this happen). Other popular music channels here include The Box, MTV, VH1 and Smash Hits, each with less than 0.1% share. It goes without saying that the aim for anyone wanting exposure to the biggest possible audience is to appear on prime-time terrestrial TV on shows like X-Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, Britain's Got Talent, Dancing on Ice or any charity telethon. Out of these, I believe only Britain's Got Talent will be on but in the audition stages during Adam's next visit. Over The Rainbow could well be a possibility, though ratings-wise it won't be high as those listed above.



Yesterday was Adam's first UK TV interview on Scottish show 'The Hour', and one of the presenters was Michelle McManus, winner of the second season of Pop Idol who I'd thought had faded into obscurity after getting shafted because of her weight. They did such a great job with this delightful interview, and mentioning Brigadoon was a nice touch. For those who have no idea what Marmite is, I like to think of it as the vegetarian yeast cousin of Bovril, which is beef-flavoured extract. It's a thick dark savoury spread that is supposed to taste meaty. Anyway, it was good to have been spared the usual stupid questions with the actual music taking centre stage for once. I think we Brits feel we're liberal enough to be coolly blasé when it comes to sexuality, so that teamed up with political correctness means it's rather uncouth to ask someone about it directly. One of the situations in which I imagine it may be brought up is in mocking conservative Americans for their outrage. The latest radio interview from Liverpool's Juice FM is full of discussion about the music, including Adam's involvement in the music video. So far, so good.