Pop Idol offers the chance of stardom, No 1 records and the celebrity lifestyle. It also offers the opportunity to be ignominiously sacked by your record company, as Gareth Gates found yesterday.
Gates was a shy, Bambi-eyed boy from Bradford when he came second to Will Young in ITV's Pop Idol four years go. His version of the Righteous Brothers' Unchained Melody may have set some people's teeth on edge but it achieved advance sales of 1.3m and went to No 1.
The world of pop was his oyster, it seemed, and his image was tacked to the bedroom wall of teenage girls up and down the country.
And then the inevitable descent, if perhaps not on a Pete Doherty scale. He had an ill-fated affair with celebrity model Jordan. The tabloids mocked his mullet hairdo. He reportedly started saying "Do you know who I am?" to bouncers. Worse, record sales nosedived.
Yesterday his management company 19 confirmed what many had assumed happened some time ago - his label Sony BMG had "decided not to renew Gareth Gates' record deal".
It was, though, upbeat about the sacking: "19 Entertainment will continue to work closely with Gareth and support him on what we believe to be an exciting future and we look forward to revealing further plans for him soon."
Pop Idol and its BBC copycat Fame Academy have had mixed results. While Will Young has flourished and Lemar won a Mobo, Michelle McManus and David Sneddon have fared less well. McManus has appeared on You Are What You Eat and has her own show on Clyde 102.5, while Sneddon gave up performing to write songs within a year of his success.
