Neil Reid could write the book on the fickle nature of the fame that follows winning a television talent contest. Or record the theme tune, if he still had a record deal. As this year’s X Factor winners, Little Mix, put a brave face on being soundly beaten to the Christmas number one slot by the Military Wives’ charity single, Reid says he has been carried back to his own 15 minutes in the national spotlight, exactly 40 years ago.
Fresh from a victory in the public vote on Opportunity Knocks in 1971, 12-year-old Reid’s version of Mother of Mine was beaten to the top of the Christmas charts by The New Seekers’ I’d Like to Teach The World to Sing.
“I’ve been watching Little Mix,” confides the 52-year-old, after running a training course in Edinburgh in his new incarnation as a management consultant, “and, of course, it takes me back, though I don’t think I went through quite the same roller coaster of emotions as they do now. It all seems so much more whipped up today.”
At first glance, the story of what happened to Reid should act as a cautionary tale for the four teenage members of Little Mix. On the back of a burst of adulation generated by Hughie Green’s Clap-o-Meter, Reid’s debut single went on to sell 2.5 million copies globally, including 400,000 in Japan. Just short of his 13th birthday, “Wee Neil’s” basin haircut and wide, toothy smile – the latter remains unchanged by the years – were suddenly everywhere. He became – and remains – the youngest person to have a number one album in the UK.
There were sell-out tours of major arenas. And then there was the thrill of seeing girls he had grown up with in Motherwell, near Glasgow, listening to him sing on the radio: “It made you popular with some, but unpopular with others.”
But the public’s attention soon moved on to the next big thing – in his case, the Osmonds, with his near-contemporary “Little” Jimmy in their ranks. Subsequent records failed to sell and, in 1974, he was dropped by the record label that had scooped him up, Simon Cowell-like, in the Opportunity Knocks studio. He ended up filling the gaps between summer seasons at the seaside and Christmas pantos with cabaret slots at theatre clubs, “to make a few quid”.
“I was listening to a radio documentary recently about the film director Orson Welles,” reflects Reid, who is now based in Blackpool, “and it said that he started his career with Citizen Kane and worked his way downwards. You could say that of me.”
Always a performer rather than a writer of his own material, Reid took his time in realising that the rags-to-riches journey is not always one-way. “I must have been 30, and I was appearing in a show at the Liverpool Empire, and I knew that if I didn’t get out of showbusiness then, and get into another career, I’d never get out at all. I’d be unemployable. Who would be interested in a 35-year-old with no experience of anything relevant?”
He’d already been filling in doing bits and pieces of sales – flogging folding shopping trolleys imported from Spain at the Ideal Home Exhibition – and was able to persuade a big insurance company to take him on to sell life cover and pensions.
Reid’s story has a happy ending. He thrived in his new industry, became a senior executive with the Bank of Scotland and, since 2007, has run his own successful consultancy. “What I do now has a bit of showbusiness about it,” he laughs. “I’ve just been on my feet for three days presenting to a group of people.” Do they know about his past? “Not that I am aware of.”
Looking back, what advice would Reid give Little Mix – whose single Cannonball was named this week as the lowest-selling debut by an X Factor winner since 2004 – about surviving the pitfalls of instant fame? “What I’ve learnt over 40 years,” he replies, “is that what you do is not what you are. When your showbusiness star starts to fade, you have to be able to recognise that it doesn’t mean you are worthless. So go for it, throw yourself into it, live the dream. But when your career falls apart, you mustn’t.”
Reid still sings occasionally, he says, at his local church, Oasis in Blackpool, with its informal, music-based style of worship. “I’ve been a Christian since I was 16,” he explains, “but felt for a long time that the traditional church had lost its way, become insular, whereas at Oasis we welcome a lot of young people.”
And what of talent shows – should they carry a health warning? “There is an element of ritual humiliation to The X Factor. But it gives people a shot at showbusiness who probably wouldn’t have got it in any other way, and that has to be a good thing.”
