Wembley, it certainly wasn’t. It also wasn’t entirely clear whether the patrons of The Courtyard pub in Morpeth had any idea of the identity of the grey-bearded crooner entertaining them on a Sunday evening last month.
But for all the disparity between this intimate gig and his past blockbuster success, Steve Brookstein – the first ever winner of The X Factor – tells me that, despite many years of torment and depression, he couldn’t be happier.
‘I’ve found peace now. God’s plans and all that. Sometimes you’ve just got to accept bad guys win.’
The bad guy in Steve’s narrative, it soon becomes clear, is none other than Simon Cowell.
Because while next week marks 20 years since Brookstein, now 56, won the reality TV show – securing a £1million record deal in front of ten million ITV viewers – it’s apparent the experience of finding fame through Cowell is one that deeply affected him.
He tells me he is only now over the trauma of being humiliated onscreen by X Factor judges Sharon Osbourne and Louis Walsh, who dubbed him ‘a fake’ and a ‘pub singer’, and then branded a national loser after being brutally dropped by Cowell’s record label within a year.
Presenter Kate Thornton and Simon Cowell as Steve is announced winner of The X Factor in 2004
‘I have made my peace with it all. The one thing I found hard, and had to do, was to forgive. But for years I couldn’t forgive.
‘The X Factor gave me everything I didn’t want: humiliation. It’s been like an albatross around my neck.’
Yet when the ticker tape fell onstage as Brookstein was declared the show’s winner, his first feelings were ones of elation. ‘In my head, I said to myself, ‘Nothing can go wrong now.’
How wrong he was. Brookstein’s experiences may be decades old, but his words have added resonance today given the tragic death of troubled One Direction star Liam Payne, aged 31. Payne was just 14 when he first came to public attention on The X Factor, four years after Brookstein.
‘My heart went out to his family,’ he says. ‘I was lucky because I was older. I was 36, I had life experience.
‘If I’d been on X Factor at his age, I could easily have seen myself go down the same road as he did.
‘I’ve spoken about my own battles with my mental health. I’ve been to those dark places. It’s a tragic set of circumstances.’
While that glittering final saw six million people vote for Brookstein to beat operatic group G4, just seven months later he was desperate to get out of his contract with Cowell, feeling he was being mismanaged by the music mogul.
He has told of attending an industry party after his first album was released in May 2005, and chatting to Cowell who was also there.
Steve and his now wife Eileen at a 2005 event. By winning The X Factor, Steve secured a £1million record deal in front of ten million ITV viewers
A silver-haired and bespectacled Steve, 56, who now sings in local coffee shops
‘He [Cowell] said ‘You’re so lucky you didn’t enter [the show] this year – the standard’s so much better. Last year was a bit of a joke.’ It was unnecessary. I’d just had a number one album.’
Not long after, Cowell pushed Brookstein before he could jump, brutally announcing on television that he ‘couldn’t sell records’.
The public humiliation that followed was swift. Mocked online, pretty much every door in the industry was slammed shut such was the influence of Cowell.
Brookstein was offered just £12,500 in compensation for the lost £1million deal, in exchange for signing a non-disclosure agreement.
Infuriated, he refused, walking away with nothing. Commercial success has since eluded him – hence the small gig in Morpeth. But he’s still managed to make a living out of music.
Indeed, on December 11, the actual date of the anniversary, Brookstein – who is happily married to his wife of 18 years, jazz singer Eileen Hunter, and has two teenage children – will be singing in a west London coffee shop.
Audiences, he says, are complimentary.
‘People are still quite surprised I can sing,’ he says. ‘I’m not blind to the fact that time hasn’t been good to me, probably because of stress. I’m losing my hair and I’m overweight, which isn’t a good look.
‘I know people look at me and say ‘Oh God he’s changed, he used to be so fit.’ I’ve gone from being 11 stone to 16 stone, I wear glasses and have a grey beard. But I’m enjoying it [performing].’
His current contentment certainly contrasts with his X Factor experience, as he reflects today: ‘I was doing all right before The X Factor. I’d supported Dionne Warwick at The Fairfield Halls in Croydon just before my first audition and had been offered a gig supporting Lionel Richie on December 11, 2004, which turned out to be the night of the final, so I had to turn it down. I could have been a supporting act for Lionel Richie. I often think about it because it’s my sliding doors moment.
Steve pictured performing in a local Caffe Nero in Birmingham alongside his wife Eileen
Steve is now happily married to jazz singer Eileen and has two teenage children
‘My dad and my wife had both seen the advert for this new talent show. I thought it would be a good opportunity to meet new people in the industry.’
Instead, he was bruised by the process. He has said how Sharon Osbourne called him the c-word during rehearsals, while Louis Walsh even said he looked like serial killer Fred West on live television. ‘It was quite shocking,’ says Brookstein. ‘There was so much hate towards me.
‘The hardest bit was when I got bullied online. People would send me emails and links to websites and there were all these pictures of me and Fred West. It was all in the [online] chatrooms. And you’re not ready for that in real life. The worst you ever got was back in school, and this was a national thing.
‘I’ve never wanted to take my own life – but I have felt that if I didn’t have Eileen and the kids I could have.’ Brookstein is unequivocal: the treatment he received on the programme showed a callous disregard for him as a person.
‘There was no duty of care [from the bosses]. What they learnt from series one wasn’t how to look after the artists, it was to protect the company,’ he says.
‘[After the first series] everyone had to sign NDAs straight away, they were controlled a lot more than they were in series one. We were just fodder for the show.’ Three weeks after the final, Steve got to number one with ‘Against all Odds’, a cover of a Phil Collins song. Yet he was already so disillusioned he admits he felt no joy when his manager Tim Byrne – who also helped to create One Direction – called him with the news.
‘He told me to remember the moment, but I’d never wanted to release the song. I couldn’t celebrate.
‘On The X Factor it was just so competitive, everyone was just climbing over bodies to get to the top, that’s how I felt. The contestants were all great, it was just the feel of the show, it was so much about ratings.’
In July 2005, he approached Cowell to try to get out of his contract: ‘I’d seen contracts and I’d also been aware of what happens when contracts go wrong. The record label always has the power.
‘You may as well just sign it and hope they don’t screw you, but they screwed me.
‘They told me they were going to take their time with my album – but then they just threw out an album of covers. I can laugh about it now, but at the time I was absolutely fuming.
‘I was asking to leave the label and then Simon decided to go on TV and said he was going to drop me. I didn’t know how vindictive they were. I just said, look give me £50,000 so I can go away and start my own thing.
‘They went no, we’ll offer you £12,500. For a million pound record deal? How does that work?
‘They wanted me to sign an NDA but I said no. It’s not about being ripped off and all the money, it’s the humiliation afterwards.
‘A few months later, I did a couple of gigs, one in Monaco at the Grand Prix, it was on [driver] Kimi Raikkonen’s yacht, all the big stars were there, Nigel Mansell, Eddie Jordan, it was a proper gig.
‘And then the following week my agent asked me to do a gig at his mate’s pub in Cornwall as a favour. I was happy to do it and they looked after me.’
He added: ‘But then an article appeared mocking my appearance at the pub. It went on for days. One newspaper put my head on a farmer’s body and said X Tractor, stuff like that.
‘All the good work, all the jobs, I had so many that were cancelled after that. They just destroy you.’
What would he say to Cowell if he saw him today?
‘I’d have nothing to say to him. I’d just like him to apologise. That’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted, an apology, but I’m never going to get one.’
Today, he admits he often thinks about what life would have been like if he hadn’t been on The X Factor.
‘I think I would be in a better place. I’ve no doubt in my mind, I’d be a better singer now, I’d be fitter now, I wouldn’t suffer from depression now.
‘I’m not going to say it ruined me but it damaged my credibility because I had a lot of good things going for me before The X Factor. But I can’t regret it, because it is what it is. All the tears I ever shed were for my wife and family. It was never about me.’
He’s soon to release his version of Peter Gabriel’s ‘Don’t Give Up’ following the death of his beloved father Errol this year: ‘I just want to keep going. The only way I’ve ever got through this is to be thankful for small mercies.’
Get tickets for Steve’s forthcoming London acoustic show at: www.stevebrookstein.com
