Chapter Four: Crazy Dreams

"I came here to be meself, and I hoped people would love me just as I am - and I think they did". Griffin.

Griffin sits in a makeup chair looking pale and distinctly tense. As someone whose natural skin tone is somewhere near to blue I don't bash 'pale' about lightly. But Griffin's pale. And noticeably thinner than when I heard him sing 'Back For Good'. The summer's passed and we're deep into autumn; the Academy, initially bursting at the seams with students battling for the spotlight, is now leaking emptiness with its three remaining inhabitants. In less than twelve hours it will all be over. One way or another I'll know Griffin's fate.

It would be wrong to suggest that the momentum shift which had occurred was a direct result of 'This Old Heart of Mine' week with its vomit-styled shirts and almost terror but it definitely had its roots there. Suddenly, maybe when I was looking away and yelling, Griffin had ceased to be favourite to be expelled and then, equally quietly, Griffin's name began to emerge as a likely finalist. His song writing ability had come to the fore which, combined with an incident with a bale of hay, seems to characterise what he'd become memorable for. Griffin's place in the Academy was no longer in question. The momentum was with him and there seemed to be a genuine possibility that he might win. Needless to say, the momentum dragged me along too.
But I can't help feeling uncomfortable as I watch Griffin today, somehow smaller and more vulnerable than I've ever seen. I've watched streaming, live shows and those bite sized catch-up programmes with Winkleman at the helm. I've seen the students in all their mundanity. Should I feel I've missed something there I've seen Griffin in nothing but a shirt and a strategically placed guitar. Now, although he's fully clothed and doing nothing more revealing than sitting in a chair, it feels that I'm intruding on an intensely personal moment. It's not my dream and however much I've come to care I'll never be able to truly understand. It's a sobering realisation.

I take one last look at Griffin, who's failing to eat the food he's been given, and switch off the television.

Later that evening I begin to vehemently wish that switching off the television was an option. My brain is on repeat that, under no circumstances, do I want to watch what is happening. But I can't move. I'm transfixed by the car crash which is emerging. What's more it feels that for me to walk away at this stage, because what I'm witnessing is painful, would be to abandon Griffin. And I can't abandon him, anymore than I could abandon Robbie when he was full of drugs and miming to George Michael songs. No. I don't give up that easily.

This doesn't stop me knowing that the journey is over, that the momentum evaporated the moment Griffin opened his mouth to battle with the four part harmony of a half-baked boyband song. Just because I care doesn't mean that I'm stupid. It does mean, however, that I'm very, very angry. Because nameless, faceless producers and record company employees are too vague a target my anger has found its release in the form of Daniel Beddingfield, a singer-songwriter with an ego the size of Andorra and an inversely proportional amount of common sense. He'd already annoyed me earlier in the week when he'd switched the song that Griffin was supposed to learn without warning. So when he appears on stage, having sung with both of the remaining students, and proclaims emphatically "Vote Alex" I need no further excuse to want to shove his microphone somewhere that will take extensive and intrusive surgery to remove.

Even as the thoughts of mutilation gather in my mind, however, they are being overtaken by more pressing emotions. The intense sense of injustice festering in my throat is giving way to tears which are threatening to break forth at any moment. If I put aside my predilection for crying at even remotely sad films - Tiny Tim's imagined death in The Muppets Christmas Carol being a particular low point - and my tendency to cry whenever a character in Neighbours dies in some freak coincidental accident then my crying whilst watching television during 2003 has been limited to events which include Tim Henman. I definitely do not cry at reality television. But here I am, watching Griffin and having to resort to the sort of over-enthusiastic nose blowing which usually accompanies the England football team losing on penalties. I do the only thing that I can. I phone another vote for Griffin.

Tissue still clamped firmly in hand the songs are over. Griffin is standing in the middle of the circle of fear, wearing a yellow t-shirt which demonstrates why people from Yorkshire should not go within 100 metres of that colour, holding hands with Alex. I feel a surge of affection for him as the BBC attempt to wring every ounce of suspense out of what has clearly only ever been a one person story. There's another bafflingly long pause.

"Alex"

As Alex's family stream on stage and the focus moves off of Griffin I realise that the tissue I'm holding has turned to pulp.