The Rise and Fall of Little Voice

Every Saturday night my teenage daughter Lottie and I sit glued to the latest dizzying instalment of The X Factor. Forget has-been Strictly Come Dancing, The X Factor has got the lot – glamour, drama, dazzling white teeth (apparently Simon Cowell insists all the young hopefuls get their gnashers whitened), rival judges at each other’s throats, even back flips.

It’s not quite as nail-biting as last year though when we were both rooting for Diana Vickers - the shy Lancashire teenager with messy blonde hair and a stunning voice. Diana, it turned out, used to go to Lottie’s old school in Blackburn – an all girls’ establishment with a dashing purple uniform. Before her big X Factor break she’d been busy studying for A levels in classics, drama and psychology and had intended to apply for a place at drama school.

This week, exactly a year on, we pitched up to see her make her West End debut in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice at London’s Vaudeville Theatre. The show boasts an all-star cast – the wonderful Lesley Sharp stars as monstrous mother Mari, Marc Warren as her small-time impresario boyfriend and Vickers as Mari’s painfully shy daughter LV – and has attracted stupendous reviews.

I feel a bit mean-spirited saying this but the play (written by Jim Cartwright and first staged at the National in 1992) could do with having at least 20 minutes lopped off. Not only that, Mari is such an appalling mother (far more interested in gin, men and whinging to her overweight neighbour) that it’s hard to understand why LV didn’t leave home years ago. Those quibbles apart, the night definitely belonged to Diana Vickers. Her acting scenes don’t require her to do much more than hug her knees and look wounded when her domineering mum tries to make her sing in public, but when she finally steps into the limelight and takes the floor at a seedy working men’s club, she’s mesmeric. There’s an amazing sequence when, clad in a floor-length glittering dress, she moves from Dusty Springfield to Edith Piaf, effortlessly taking in numbers from Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Marianne Faithfull and Shirley Bassey along the way. I don’t know if Simon Cowell has slipped by to see her performance, but if he hasn’t, he should. She knocks this year’s contenders into a cocked hat.

As we left the theatre I checked my emails on my phone to find that current X Factor contestant Olly Murs is now following me on Twitter. And when we stopped for a coffee at an M40 service station on the way home the first person we saw was Rikki Loney, who the public booted off the show last week. Clutching a carton of coffee and looking pale and wan, he was busy looking at the front pages of the red-tops, all dominated by twins John and Edward and predictions that they’ll win this year’s X Factor. Oh dear. I feel as though The X Factor is taking over my life…