Yahoo News Simon Cowell 'cancels' Newcastle auditions to find new boyband superstars
Simon Cowell has abandoned auditions in Newcastle to find the UK's 'next boyband superstars' siting issues with a 'travel schedule' as the reason, just as photos emerge of try outs in Liverpool with next to no queue.
There was great fanfare back in April when X Factor and Britain's Got Talent mogul Simon revealed his ambitious plans to scour the UK for young male singers to form a group, in the hope of emulating the success of global phenomenon One Direction, with the process set to be filmed for new Netflix show The Midas Touch.
He told the PA news agency: "I would pray to find a band as good as One Direction and to find the records as good as they made, there are so many factors involved to make a band successful all over the world. You can't fake this, even though I’m the one going out to do the auditions, it really depends on the individuals."
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Explaining why he decided to launch the auditions, Simon added: "Bands never knock on your front door, it's never happened in my career, someone has to go out and put them together - and the truth is since One Direction there hasn't been a successful UK boyband. The only way to do it is do what I used to do, go out and do it and audition and do it face to face and don't have any pre-casting."
In a radio interview last month, Simon even told Geordie star Vicky Pattison that he'd deliberately chosen to kick off the audition tour in Newcastle because he was a huge fan of the city and its people; but, after that that hype the auditions, set down for July 4 and 5 never happened, although organisers claimed venues were never actually booked either, due to problems with the travel schedule.
And when the boyband search did finally kick off in Liverpool at the weekend, sources are claiming there was only a 'trickle' of hopefuls turned up, with crowd control barriers not required, in stark contrast to scenes of the X Factor's hey-day when huge lines of singer would wait their turn to be seen.
An insider told The Sun: "They started arriving slowly from about 9am on Saturday but the biggest number in the queue never amounted to more than about 40.
“By early afternoon, the number arriving had virtually dried up and it was the same story on the Sunday audition.
