Michelle McManus' Reality: The Musical

100487 original

You remember Michelle McManus, don't you? She's the one who wasn't Will Young who won the show that wasn't X Factor – famously failing to make it big after 10 million-odd viewers declared her Pop Idol champ. In reality, we don't learn much more about the singer in this hour of camp songs and gentle banter. Oh, except one thing: she's actually pretty funny.

Musically, this is fairly ridiculous. Essentially it's an album's worth of high-octane showstoppers with a dodgy MIDI backing track. As such, Michelle McManus' Reality requires a high tolerance for power ballad heaped on power ballad, and a willingness to overlook the most tenuous links between the storytelling and the song choice. McManus certainly has a winning voice, but if this feels initially like paid-for karaoke, then an audience singalong for the final number seals the deal on that front.

What redeems it is McManus's carefree charisma. "Oooh, I feel like that wee guy who takes the choirs," she giggles during the participatory caterwaul. We hear (without bitterness) of her failures at chart success, and her attempts to lose weight on Gillian McKeith's show. Consistently, she laughs up her showbiz shortcomings, and plays up the authentic cheekiness of someone who is a girl from Baillieston first, a TV star second. At times, it feels almost artistic – a sendup of the glitz of the stage and screen, popping its puffed up excesses with an overtly performative working class "reality". Mostly, though, it's just nice to hear that Gillian McKeith is just as awful in real life as she appears on the telly.