Saturday night television rarely gives us great moments, but I’ll tell you one of them: the 2000 Stars in Their Eyes final when the previous year’s winner, Chris de Burgh impersonator Ian Moor – a lab technician from Hull – was surprised on stage by the real Chris de Burgh during his performance of Lady in Red. TV gold.
Stars in Their Eyes wasn’t name-checked once during the launch episode of Starstruck (ITV), which was a bit of a cheek. It’s essentially the same show but with an X Factor-style judging panel thrown in. The one twist is that three impersonators team up for a performance, doing a few lines each.
The judging panel includes Sheridan Smith, who might as well move into my house and cut out the middle man. The others are Jason Manford, Adam Lambert and Beverley Knight. They can all sing to varying degrees, so came on stage belting out a hit, alongside genial host Olly Murs. Then the competition got under way and we watched the contestants transform into pop icons.
First up was a trio of Freddie Mercury impersonators: Rob the stay-at-home dad, Michael the phone sales adviser and Joe the musical theatre performer. Joe went for a bold choice of costume; as Lambert put it: “You gotta be brave to pull off a harlequin onesie.”
You can see why they kicked off with Freddie, but he was such a good choice – the costumes, the songs, the showmanship – that it all felt a bit flat after that. We got three Ariana Grandes, three Marvin Gayes and three Lady Gagas (disappointing that none of the Gagas opted for the meat dress she wore to the MTV Awards). They all sang nicely but failed to set the world alight. The best act of the night was judged to be Rob (channelling 1986 Wembley Stadium Freddie), who will now go through to the final where £50,000 is up for grabs.
I am not a fan of The Masked Singer (investing weeks of your life in watching someone dressed up as a traffic cone, finally to discover it’s Aled Jones?) but I do have a grudging admiration for its delirious, off-the-wall energy. Starstruck feels dull and dated by comparison, with a budget that looks only marginally higher than a pub karaoke contest.
