Saturday 1st March, Manchester Evening News Arena
The M.E.N. is one of my favourite venues and it didn’t disappoint for my second X Factor tour concert. Every single act got a tremendous reception and the noise at times was deafening. The audience seemed to be made up of far more teenage girls than at Sheffield, hence the need to cover my ears when Futureproof and Leon took to the stage. Once again, Same Difference were the first act to get everybody on their feet and they performed all four of their songs to massive applause, wild cheering and much screaming (though not as much as for Leon because, as the girl in front of me shouted into her friend’s ear several times, he is obviously ‘SOOOOOO GAWJUS!!!!!!!!! OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!’….)
I had a good-natured disagreement with my friend during the interval about who she might be most impressed with in the second half. She favoured Leon, I presented the case for SD. Afterwards she admitted that she had been persuaded to change her mind, not by my amazing powers of persuasion, but by the sheer exuberance, enjoyment and singing ability SD demonstrated. We both agreed that their performance reminded us of a Steps concert we’d attended at the same venue a few years previously. Another convert in Same Difference’s march to world domination! So onwards and upwards…….
Saturday 8th March, Brighton Centre
This was a date I’d been looking forward to with mounting anticipation and excitement for weeks and weeks. Thanks to some extremely kind and generous SD fans who will remain nameless (yes, that means you Gary and Simon!), I not only had the opportunity to take a couple of very special young fans into the Meet and Greet before the show, but also to present them with extremely rare and limited edition CD’s of Same Difference’s performances on The X Factor. There are only 10 copies of this CD in existence, created by a group of fans on the Same Difference Appreciation Thread as a ‘Thank You’ to Sean & Sarah for all the enjoyment they’ve brought us and for their participation in a wonderful Q&A session. The girls, accompanied by their carers, were thrilled to bits with their copies and gleefully showed them to all the acts they met during the Meet & Greet. I got to say ‘Thank You’ personally to Sean & Sarah and chatted to them briefly about things, including having met them before at the X Factor studios on quarter-final week (the ‘puppies and bubbles’ week as I think of it, but that’s a whole different story ;-)).
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We all left the Meet and Greet room in a state of high excitement although, in some respects, the best was yet to come. We took our seats in the second row and enjoyed a fantastic time as all the acts performed to huge cheers and applause. What made it so special for me was being able to watch the awe and excitement on the faces of the girls as their favourites appeared, one by one, just a few yards in front of them. It is something I’ll never forget.
Needless to say, the excitement reached fever pitch when Sean & Sarah finally took to the stage after the interval. The girls were waving their home-made banners frantically and were soon rewarded with waves, smiles, winks, thumbs-up and kisses blown to them as soon as their heroes spotted them. They were in seventh heaven and jumping up and down with the sheer joy of it all. I’m really grateful to Sean & Sarah for all the attention they gave to them throughout their set and during the finale. I think it definitely helped to cement it as one of the best days of their young lives. (It was certainly one of the best days of my ‘old’ life).
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