RYLAN CLARK: I Played the Fame Game on The X Factor | GREAT MOMENTS

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3:04Rylan Clark: Hello everyone, I'm Jamie Lang, and this is Great Moments.

3:11Rylan Clark: Hello everyone, this is Great Moments, where I share some of my favorite moments from my conversations on Great Company. Something that's made me think, made me laugh, or changed my perspective. And hopefully, hopefully there's something in it for you too. So are you ready? Let's get into it

3:30Rylan Clark: I don't think you remember this But I remember this When we slept together Yeah, do you remember that? Not really Okay, well my memory's a bit hazy Yeah It's a little bit hazy You weren't the only one Do you remember this moment When we were in the car together? We weren't in the car together I was in the car And I was singing a song See, you don't I think I do remember this Do you remember this? We were singing a song And I think it was Like a Britney Spears song Or whatever it was and I was singing along like this and it was something like, hit me baby one more time. Oh my God, sorry, I thought Brittany was here.

4:00Rylan Clark: I know, she is. And I look to my right and I pull up to you and you're singing exactly the same song with me. And I was like... Oh my God, was that you? I've been looking for you for years. I never realised. I thought I was meant to be. And you're going, hit me baby one more time. I swear to God. And you look at me and went... And just... And I was like... I hate myself. Honestly, I remember this. You don't remember this? This definitely sounds like me, yeah. I didn't realise that your real name is Ross. Who fucking told you that? Yeah, my real name's Ross. Ross Richard Clark. Yeah, dick in the middle.

4:42Rylan Clark: Born 25th of October. Same year that I was born, but we're not going to say that year. 88. Yeah, you said it fine, 88. Someone's been on Wikipedia, haven't they? Nice to see the researchers in here. When did you change your name to Ryland? Well, I never legally changed it. Did you not? I'm still Ross. But yeah, it was when I was about 16, 17. I was working in River Island. Yeah. And at the same time I was modelling because I've always been like 40 foot tall. And I did a modelling job for this like concierge company at Canary Wharf. And it was basically the most naff photo shoot of like me with a bunch of flowers knocking on a door.

5:17Rylan Clark: Here you go, madam. Like that awful style of like muggy picture. and my modeling agency at the time said our ross is a boring name we're going to call you keelan i went all right yeah fine whatever sorry they said they were going to call you keelan keelan was my name k-e-e-l-a-n yeah yeah yeah and uh so i did this job all day everyone's calling me keelan and at the end of the day back then it's how old we are they paid you by check but the check wasn't a written check it was a printed check from like a company and it was made up to mr k clark and i was so embarrassed to go up to this woman who'd handed me this check and say, I'm really sorry, can you change this check?

5:55Rylan Clark: Because my name's not Keelan, it's Ross. I never ended up cashing the check. Shut up. Yeah, because I was that embarrassed. And back then it was like 200 quid, a lot of money. Yeah, a lot of money. And the next day I was back at River Island on my lunch break, opposite was WH Smith. I went in, picked up a baby book, went straight to R, because I thought it was going to have to be the same initial as my name if I get paid by check again. And I saw Ryland and I went, oh, that sounds like Keelan. Shut the book and then walked out. Get out of here. There's no ways. True. You literally opened up and that said that's why...

6:23Rylan Clark: I think it was like a thousand and one baby names. Yeah. Have you always been this kind of charismatic, kind of larger than life character? I mean, I've always been the same person, but there's definitely like two of me. Like, I think I'm pretty boring. Really? Yeah. I think I'm a bit of a bore. You're not a bit of a bore. I am. But our agent is over there nodding his head. I'm not this like party boy that everyone thinks I am. Yeah, but I don't think you're a party boy, but like... I would say this, like I definitely, there are, there are so many sides to everybody, right? Like people always say there's one side with your family, there's one side with your friends, there's one side you're at work and there's one side maybe you're in your relationship.

7:02Rylan Clark: And you definitely sort of, you know, especially, like Big Ben, four faces. Yeah, exactly. But also in this like life of like presenting in TV, you kind of have to have two sides. Yeah, like Rylan is a bit of a character. Really? Definitely, yeah. But it's a lot of Ross, but like Ross on crack. Yeah. But as a kid though, growing up. Oh, I was that like ginger kid that was like feisty little bastards. Yeah, I'd be the one at like family parties, like getting up on the chair and doing a little routine to Spice Girls. I've one of my brothers sitting there going, oh, fucking hell, I wish you liked football.

7:33Rylan Clark: So you're young, you're living in Essex, and you go to this school, which is apparently one of the best schools. At the time, it was the top school in the country. It's the top school in the country. I was like this really bright kid. Were you? Yeah. did you know what you wanted to do and i always wanted to be a pop star and then i i i knew i was gonna be famous but i didn't know what for get out of here yeah no i know like in even in my yearbooks i remember in the yearbook for boys yeah i won most likely to be famous and in the yearbook for the girls i was in that one as well obviously and i can't remember what it was i think it was most likely to end up on tv or something like that do you know what i say funny i i for some reason because we're the same age like fame was like the most like exciting thing you could because of the era we grew up in so why is that so when we were at secondary school which was like 2000 to 2005 that era is when things like reality tv really kicked off yeah so things like big brother um i'm a celebrity even things like that and it just showed you especially big brother that anyone could become a superstar you know we'd grown up previous to that with people like film stars like arnold schwarzenegger tom hanks yeah yeah like celebrities we didn't have social media we didn't have none of that and then the spice girls come along and they were british girls that had taken over the world and you're like wow like they're celebrities then all of a sudden you've got like the likes of jade goody and people like that this reality star that come through and all of a sudden you look at as an absolute celebrity they are in your head at that age on the same level as someone like the spice girls or tom hanks because they are everywhere they're earning so much money they're celebrities and there was this thing in my head like i was always obsessed with big brother and that whole concept of a world within a world like this artificial bubble that's been created like i used to love the truman show the film like all of that and it's all these like little drip feeds at our age that started making me go well i could do that and i remember it was year so it would have been big brother four so 2003 so it would have been year nine year nine we went on a school trip to the isle of wight and at that point big brother four had just started and i printed the big brother four eye off in the it lab and stuck it on my suitcase and i remember getting on the train to go to school such a weird thing to stick on i am weird but it was almost like i was like crafting my future yeah yeah so like physically doing it and obviously i did ended up going in big brother i've got those suitcases and won i'm gonna get into that but it's just this fascination with fame i'm so i'm so glad i don't know why it was our age like i remember seeing britney spears on tv and just being obsessed with like maybe for different reasons for different reasons but i but i was obsessed And I also like, I used to go to bed at night and it wasn't.

10:36Rylan Clark: Where are you going with this? Yeah. Thinking of Britney Spears. No, but I used to go to bed at night. And I remember I used to like dream about like being on stage and performing. And so many of the guys that I knew were thinking, we had this obsession with being famous. But there is. Because it was like untouchable. Yeah, there's a group now though. There is a group of us and we're all a very similar age that are doing not the same things, but we're all in it in some respect. and whether people i'm just very honest but whether people want to admit that it's thinking back to those times that childhood that we had and then teenage years which are the years that shape you yeah don't get me wrong people later on in life they could be in their 40s 50s 60s 70s might have a massive career change or change the path of their life because of circumstance but there is a lot of us in the industry that we both work in now that are of a very similar age that are all doing the best way to describe it is an event let's say there's an event that everyone wants to go to there is a group of our age people that are standing there all together and it's because we all grew up in that era of i could do that like all that this is showing me is that that could be me and that's when you had these new avenues to be who you wanted to be you know you found fame on a reality show yeah yeah i found fame on a reality show yeah but i was i was I at the beginning of it was I didn't want people to think that I was doing it Because I wanted to be famous You didn't want people to think that Yeah but I did think it right Of course I did a reality show about being posh Because I thought it would be fun to be famous Exactly But I tried to make every excuse under the sun To be like no it was because of this and because of that Of course Because you know you see someone on TV It's like I just want to be famous you think prick Yeah but you never tried I don't think you ever tried to make an excuse No I was like I know what I want to do and I'm going to do it Yeah, you always were just like, no, that's why I want to be famous.

12:28Rylan Clark: I was like, I want to be famous. I mean, don't get me wrong. It's a very different story now. But when I was on X Factor, I had a job. X Factor was a job to me, 100%. And I knew, am I the best singer in the world? No. Can I do as good as other people on here? Yeah, I can. And when the process started happening and I started going through and I saw the way they were treating me different to this guy here and that girl there, I was like, okay. and it's I just started playing the game early and you realize in especially in reality tv as much as people don't like to go on about stereotypes bullshit there is a box for absolutely everyone if I'm the producer I'm the exec I'm the head of the channel I've got a chart it's a little bit like when you see on these reality shows the pictures and the polaroid that's what it is and you want the gay one you want the joke hack you want the good looking guy you want the sweet innocent girl you want that it's actually that yeah you're completely right and i knew well i'm not the good looking guy i'm not come on the boy band boy come on no like i knew what i was i knew what my box was you were feeling quite a lot of those boxes i think i'm good looking but yeah i knew what my job was and i thought i can either stand here and sing and last two or three weeks of the live shows or I give, give the machine exactly what it needs to be fed and hopefully last a little bit longer and eight weeks later that right there it was.

13:54Rylan Clark: Yeah. But that's amazing that you realize that. Yeah. When I did main Chelsea, I did not realize how much of a game it was. I was the joke, but I knew I was the joke. So I was in on it. That's the difference. Whereas looking before me, you know, not mention any names, but especially on X Factor, there are people that get that far or actually not as far as me. I was the one that got that. but there were people that got to those live shows that we'd all perceive as the public as the joke act, but they didn't believe they were the joke act. They thought they were the next Lady Gaga or they thought they were the next Madonna.

14:25Rylan Clark: When in fact, from day one, I was like, I'm not the next Lady Gaga. I know I'm the joke. Well, let's play the game. Where does that self-awareness come from? Cause that's the era we grew up in the era we grew up in. I just got there earlier. Yeah, but that self-awareness realizing that because it's, every bit of your emotion wants to typically as humans we'll just go i'm not the joke hack this is i'm good i'm great i'm this and that but you kind of lent into it and were like no this is what it's going to be because i knew i wasn't as good as dave three three people along i knew i wasn't as good as that you know i was on there with like james arthur i was on there with ella henderson i was there with lucy spragg and union jage i mean all of these people that were incredibly talented singers i knew i wasn't as good technically a singer as them i knew i was better than what i was doing on a saturday night on x factor and so did all of they so when you watch x factor back and week one obviously i'm in the bottom two and get saved week two when i got saved by the public for the first time on them live shows just look at every single other contestants reaction because they were more happier for me than i was because they were like fucking brilliant like because they knew they were all in with me they knew i could sing i shared a bed with james for like six weeks did you really yeah and we used to sing in bed like pretty much every night like he made up this song about me called rylander and we all even now whenever we speak he's like rylander and i'm like rylander like it's just like piss take and it's like you and james are the shared events yeah we were like bromance central i love that man you know he's like a brother to me and so is jarmaine like we were the shirsey boys we always will be

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17:10Connect your bank account, add those on-time payments to your Experian credit file, and your FICO score updates right away. You could instantly raise your FICO score by an average of 14 points with Experian Boost. Download the Experian app for free today. Results will vary. Users who received a boost improved their FICO score 8 from Experian by an average of 14 points. See App Store or Experian.com for details. Results will vary. Not all payments are boost eligible. Users who received a boost improved their FICO score 8 from Experian by an average of 14 points. Some may not see improved scores or approval odds.

17:42Not all lenders use Experian credit files, and not all lenders use scores impacted by Experian boost. See Experian.com for details. Is your kid's birthday coming up? Don't stress the prep. The Party Shop at Michaels is your one-stop shop for everything from bluey to rodeo. Transform your space into a birthday wonderland with dream-worthy tablescapes and decor starting at$0.99. Plus, get free helium inflation on select balloon styles. Whether you're crafting a one-of-a-kind bash or grabbing the essentials, Michaels has everything to make their big day legendary. Shop now and order ahead for delivery or in-store pickup.

18:19Michaels, everything to celebrate anything. Quick question. When was the last time a display ad changed your mind? Now think about the last time a friend told you about something they loved. Different feeling, right? That's how podcast advertising works. A host who's built real trust with their audience talks about your brand in their own words, in their own voice. It doesn't interrupt the experience. It's part of it. With Acast, you can access the world's largest podcast marketplace. Choose the right shows, the right audiences, the right format. Then watch the data tell you it worked. You're not buying impressions.

18:54You're buying influence. Learn more by visiting acast.com slash advertise.