estate was built and which now formed part of the sewage system beneath it. Michael called it hell.
When he was growing up, there had been only two ways whereby a boy (particularly a black boy) might reasonably expect to get out of Collingbrook: crime (mainly dealing drugs) or sport. Now there was a third, Chart Throb. To Michael, forming a boy band certainly seemed a more attractive proposition than buying a gun or training as a boxer and so The Four-Z was born, and it was going to get him and his family out of hell.
There had of course been endless debate about the naming of the group and the name was still not considered entirely satisfactory. The problem was that people kept referring to the boys as The Four Zed when it seemed obvious to Michael that what they wanted to be called was The Force.
‘Why don’t you spell it The Force then?’ Michael’s mother asked.
‘Because then people would miss the pun,’ Michael replied. ‘There’s four of us see, The Four-se.’
‘Yes but if you spell it with a Z that makes it fourz like in paws, not force like in Morse. A Z isn’t an S.’
‘Yeah, I know , Mum, but a Z looks cool. Look . . .’ Michael took a piece of paper and wrote down Four-Z and beside it Four-S. ‘I mean come on, which looks cooler?’
‘People aren’t going to be reading it, they’re going to be hearing it,’ his mum pointed out.
‘Not on this form, Mum. They’ll be reading this form and I need to give it the best shot I have.’
So Michael wrote down The Four-Z, and when Emma sent the boys an invitation to attend the Birmingham audition she believed she was booking a group called The Four Zed.
Next on the form came the instruction to describe yourself or your group in ten words. Michael and his fellow group members had imagined that listing ten adjectives instead of forming a sentence was an original approach.
They wrote Bitchin’, Blingin’, Badass, Beautiful, Bodacious, Ball bustin’ Boy Band . Emma had read many such exhortations but she did not think the worse of The Four-Z for it. When thousands of people are asked the same question and given only ten words with which to answer it even Shakespeare would be hard put to come up with something unique.
The final question was Why should we pick you? In answer to this, Michael wrote, This is our dream. It is all we ever wanted. We will work hard. We will learn and we will grow. We will make you proud and we will rock your arse!
Just like tens of thousands of others who, like Michael, had learned Chart Throb -speak from the previous series.
Having agonized for so long over the band’s name, its description and the question Why should we pick you? Michael would have been surprised to discover that the thing which interested Emma most about what he had written on the entry form was his address. It is probable that if Michael had done as he had considered doing and used a PO box for his correspondence The Four-Z would never have been sent an invitation to audition at all. Nineteen other entirely similar-sounding black boy bands from the Midlands had already emerged from their envelopes, one even called The Fource, but none came from such a notoriously hopeless place as the Collingbrook Estate. Collingbrook was a byword for everything that had gone wrong in post-war town planning, a drug-saturated war zone into which the police were fearful to venture. Emma knew that the contrast between the lives these boys must currently be leading and the ‘celebrity lifestyle’ of which they dreamed was what Calvin would definitely call good telly.
Emma placed The Four-Z on the Blinger pile.
Like buses, successful application letters seemed to come in groups and the very next envelope that Emma opened after The Four-Z was from Peroxide. Another nod-through, which Emma placed directly on to the Blingers pile without even reading it or referring its contents to Trent. Emma had been expecting to hear from Peroxide; it had, after all, been her
When he was growing up, there had been only two ways whereby a boy (particularly a black boy) might reasonably expect to get out of Collingbrook: crime (mainly dealing drugs) or sport. Now there was a third, Chart Throb. To Michael, forming a boy band certainly seemed a more attractive proposition than buying a gun or training as a boxer and so The Four-Z was born, and it was going to get him and his family out of hell.
There had of course been endless debate about the naming of the group and the name was still not considered entirely satisfactory. The problem was that people kept referring to the boys as The Four Zed when it seemed obvious to Michael that what they wanted to be called was The Force.
‘Why don’t you spell it The Force then?’ Michael’s mother asked.
‘Because then people would miss the pun,’ Michael replied. ‘There’s four of us see, The Four-se.’
‘Yes but if you spell it with a Z that makes it fourz like in paws, not force like in Morse. A Z isn’t an S.’
‘Yeah, I know , Mum, but a Z looks cool. Look . . .’ Michael took a piece of paper and wrote down Four-Z and beside it Four-S. ‘I mean come on, which looks cooler?’
‘People aren’t going to be reading it, they’re going to be hearing it,’ his mum pointed out.
‘Not on this form, Mum. They’ll be reading this form and I need to give it the best shot I have.’
So Michael wrote down The Four-Z, and when Emma sent the boys an invitation to attend the Birmingham audition she believed she was booking a group called The Four Zed.
Next on the form came the instruction to describe yourself or your group in ten words. Michael and his fellow group members had imagined that listing ten adjectives instead of forming a sentence was an original approach.
They wrote Bitchin’, Blingin’, Badass, Beautiful, Bodacious, Ball bustin’ Boy Band . Emma had read many such exhortations but she did not think the worse of The Four-Z for it. When thousands of people are asked the same question and given only ten words with which to answer it even Shakespeare would be hard put to come up with something unique.
The final question was Why should we pick you? In answer to this, Michael wrote, This is our dream. It is all we ever wanted. We will work hard. We will learn and we will grow. We will make you proud and we will rock your arse!
Just like tens of thousands of others who, like Michael, had learned Chart Throb -speak from the previous series.
Having agonized for so long over the band’s name, its description and the question Why should we pick you? Michael would have been surprised to discover that the thing which interested Emma most about what he had written on the entry form was his address. It is probable that if Michael had done as he had considered doing and used a PO box for his correspondence The Four-Z would never have been sent an invitation to audition at all. Nineteen other entirely similar-sounding black boy bands from the Midlands had already emerged from their envelopes, one even called The Fource, but none came from such a notoriously hopeless place as the Collingbrook Estate. Collingbrook was a byword for everything that had gone wrong in post-war town planning, a drug-saturated war zone into which the police were fearful to venture. Emma knew that the contrast between the lives these boys must currently be leading and the ‘celebrity lifestyle’ of which they dreamed was what Calvin would definitely call good telly.
Emma placed The Four-Z on the Blinger pile.
Like buses, successful application letters seemed to come in groups and the very next envelope that Emma opened after The Four-Z was from Peroxide. Another nod-through, which Emma placed directly on to the Blingers pile without even reading it or referring its contents to Trent. Emma had been expecting to hear from Peroxide; it had, after all, been her
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