Back to reality for Harry Williams on quest to prove he has X Factor

“Everyone has got a back story now,” Harry Williams sighs as he concludes a withering assessment on the state of reality television today.

Previously the Exeter Chiefs and England tighthead prop had been particular to The Great British Bake Off, offering an acerbic running commentary via Twitter on the rise and fall of various flans and souffles. Then the programme moved to Channel 4 and the love affair ended.

“It needed one more person to come across,” Williams said, pain etched on his face. “When three-quarters of the cast have been replaced, you are just not as invested in their personalities. I really like Noel Fielding but it is Noel Fielding acting like Noel Fielding. Also he does not eat any of the cake. How can you be the judge of a baking competition when you don’t eat sugar? They had a really good formula and it has had the soul ripped out of it. It is just a money-making scheme now.”

His reviews of The X Factor and other such shows are even more scathing, but Williams possesses a back story worth investing in; a roundabout route from sleeping above the clubhouse in New Zealand via Loughborough University and Jersey through to making his debut for England in Argentina this summer.

“Perseverance was half the battle,” Williams said “If you keep plugging away good things tend to happen. When people say that it sounds like a cliche but to do well and push yourself you need to have a basic enjoyment of the task at hand.”

Williams grew up in Crystal Palace and attended Whitgift School, where he played alongside Elliot Daly and Marland Yarde. While that pair were instantly snapped up by Wasps and London Irish respectively, Williams started working for his father, a bricklayer, before six months at North Shore Rugby Club in New Zealand.

“We basically got free rent in the club flat if you cleaned the fields after a matchday and looked after the gym,” Williams said. “Then I got another job cleaning out the bakery. That was a lot of fun. It was very stress-free quality of life.”

Enrolling at Loughborough University, Williams was on the fringes of the Wasps academy but it was not until he was picked up by Nottingham and Jersey that his development accelerated. There are witness statements at both clubs of Williams turning up to training in a shell suit replete with gold chain, which Williams highly disputes. “That’s ridiculous,” Williams said. “I had a St Christopher chain; it wasn’t a solid gold crucifix. Who told you that?”

The Championship is to props what finishing school used to be for society debutantes. “All the raw material was there,” Harvey Biljon, the Jersey head coach, recalls. “He just needed that platform and structure to progress.”

He soon appeared on the radar of Rob Baxter, the Exeter director of rugby, who signed him in 2015. The learning curve has only steepened since then with the transition to Premiership and then international rugby. That last leap involved taking what the 26-year-old describes as a fairly “drastic lifestyle change.”

“It was about changing my body shape.” Williams said. “Cutting out the beers and the crap. I was surprised how much you have to give up if you really want to effect change.”

He did, however, draw the line at following Lewis Hamilton in turning vegan. “I don’t really see the point of being a vegan,” Williams said. “Why would you deny yourself these basic pleasures? I don’t agree with it on a fundamental level.”

This season, the improvements will be more incremental. The feedback on the tour to Argentina from Eddie Jones, both publicly and privately, has been overwhelmingly positive. Jones warms quickly to players who haven’t travelled the path of least resistance, and has seemingly forgotten his demand that Williams get a haircut. “Hopefully that is flying under the radar.”

Long hair, tattoos incorporating all manner of designs and hues and a reading list that includes books on the occult and the laws of attraction, Williams does not fit the mould of many monosyllabic tightheads. Even if X Facto-style sob stories don’t tug at his heartstrings, he still has a tender side.

“There’s a film called My Dog Skip,” Williams says. “Jesus Christ, it is so emotional. It is about this little dog that gets adopted but then the kid grows up and goes away. It’s likes Marley & Me but on a far deeper level.

He is also in the process of attempting to organise a bowling team with his Exeter teammates.

“I am trying to find a league for us to enter,” he said. “The only one I have found is an OAP women’s league which we are not allowed to enter. That may become a side project. Build it and they will come.”