Have I got talent?

The contestants for the 13th series of Britain’s Got Talent, the variety show which starts on Saturday, certainly showed variety: next to me in the queue underneath the London Palladium are small children, a singer boasting about knowing Robbie Williams’s dad, and a Chelsea Pensioner in full Scarlets. A young researcher tries to put us at ease: ‘Have you come far?’ The Pensioner stares at her. ‘From Chelsea,’ he barks.

Britain’s Got Talent is event television, the sort of show audiences still watch live and talk about, on Twitter or even while sitting together at home — it’s like Question Time for ITV on Saturday nights. And like Question Time, there is some element of contrivance: as the QT audience can, shockingly, include political activists, those shots of long queues of people waiting to be auditioned are actually often of the audience. Most contestants at the Palladium auditions had been invited by the producers to jump the queue: you can do something as un–British as that if they think you have talent.

After signing my paperwork— certifying that I have no mental illnesses — I am filmed walking upstairs and preparing to go on stage with my stand-up routine, all this hours before the judges are even in the building. I am swiftly hustled past their star dressing rooms to the holding room where we wait. The holding room, where everyone sits looking bored and anxious and making desultory conversation, is pretty much the only part of the day which is exactly as it appears on television.

We eavesdrop on each other’s interviews to camera. Some of the contestants are as focused on capturing the narrative as anyone on Question Time — I listen to a group of young black kids answer every question with an inspirational message about young black kids — and I wonder if I should have got someone to draw up a grid for my narrative.