Blog
Don’t believe what you see on the television
Written by Andy Patterson
Guitarist Jon Gomm was catapulted into the minds of millions of Twitter users last week when Stephen Fry tweeted about a video of his performance on Youtube. This is the video that Britain’s favourite polymath tweeted about:
It was just after this tweet that Jon got a phone call from the producers of TV show ‘Britain’s Got Talent’. They asked ‘Would Jon like to come on to the show to try out?’. Jon’s manager takes up the story:
‘I happen to know for a fact that the open auditions took place months ago and there are anxious hopefuls all over the country waiting for their phones to ring to see if they’ve made it to the TV stage of the audition process. In the meantime, producers are calling musicians who have shown zero interest in appearing on the show to invite them to take part and groom them for victory. As a long time loather of all reality/talent shows I told them where to shove it in no uncertain terms. These programmes are exploitative bollocks. Don’t believe the bullshit people. Simon Cowell can kiss my ass’
There’s a bigger message to learn here though – as Lefsetz reports in another of his posts, Jon Gomm has been playing up to 200 gigs a year – sleeping on friends floors and sofas all over the country and the world. He has done his time, and it is now starting to pay off. I can’t imagine that views on YouTube pay much in the way of direct income (a friend of mine reports that 10 million (yes million) views on YouTube paid him £12), but it has raised his profile and his talent.
So, good luck to him, and well done for believing and keeping the faith. It would have been easy to say yes to BGT – to take the easy out and entry onto the Fame merry – go – round.
Nice one.
Find the original Lefsetz post here: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2012/02/15/e-mail-of-the-day-41/