Not many bands can lay claim to the title "pop sensation" before they've even released a record. And, according to the rules of pop, a band formed by a man with a mullet and the woman responsible for Billie Piper should barely merit a footnote in the annals of music history. But when the five ordinary people brought together by the ITV reality show Popstars walked on stage for their first public live performance, the screams of the 2,000-strong crowd almost drowned out the singing - and sensation status was officially confirmed.
The audience at G.A.Y. - London's biggest gay night - is the music industry's pop barometer. If you can't get the crop-topped teenagers' hips swinging at 1am, then you've little chance of your record charting much higher than number 84. If tonight is anything to go by, anything less than number one this weekend will be a disappointment.
It's not that Hear'Say (as we must now learn to call them) are particularly sensational in their own right - their tracks are bog-standard pop fare and they don't particularly look like pop sensations. Instead, it's the whole deal. One was a cleaner who a few months ago could only dream of onstage adulation; another was a daffodil in a drag act. Now they're on everything from Richard and Judy to Ant and Dec: as exploitation goes, the Popstars phenomenon is about as cynical as it gets.
Happily, the G.A.Y. audience was up for all the exploitation on offer, and as the curtain went up to reveal the band in silhouette, they went wild. Despite a bungled start - the audience was to have been whipped into an even greater frenzy with a video compilation of memorable moments from the TV show - the troupers nervelessly launched straight into Pure and Simple, the first single. There were special screams for each of the performers as they stepped forward for the solo sections. For reasons that will be obvious to the careful reader of any tabloid, you might have expected this audience to go wild for Noel Sullivan (the cute one with the eyebrows). But in fact the loudest adulation was reserved for Kym Marsh, who is well on track to gay icon status - although the big-breasted single parent from Wigan is more Elsie Tanner than Kylie Minogue.
Three other album tracks - including the stonking second single Show Me the Way to Your Love - were performed just as slickly. It may be panto by Christmas for Noel, Danny, Kym, Suzanne and Myleene, but if G.A.Y. is anything to go by, pop superstardom is guaranteed for at least a week or two. And yes, Noel's mum cried.
