How Lee Harding almost became an Australian Idol

I cannot watch television. To be completely accurate, I cannot just watch television. No, I must eat, or read, or sew, or knit, because I simply cannot sit down with empty hands and open eyes and do nothing.

But on Sunday night, I was too late, and caught unprepared, and because Australian Idol was on and music trumps almost all, I had no choice but to sit and watch with undivided attention.

And then Lee walked onto stage with a song of beyond caring and slammed-door leaving; of Tainted Love, and…

It was as if the room, the audience, the sofabed, the everything was gone and I was in a thumping, heat-slick club, like a beating, beating heart, and out of the people and the music and the crush of noise and rhythm he slid in front of me, leaned me against the wall so close I could smell an incongruous warm freshness, and…

Then he laughed, but not unkindly, and melted away into tinny, television applause - and I was back.

Now. If he had this effect on me, a twenty-two year old accountant…

One can only imagine what he did to the millions of hormone-crazed teenage girls around the country…








[A gripe, though: He just had to get knocked out the very next day, didn’t he?? Bloody telly.]