The show must go on
Before the announcement of Australia’s Got Talent’s 2013 winner, Guy Davis looks back with host Julia Morris at a series packed with promise, potential and powerhouse performances.
It’s usually the case that the grand final of a TV talent quest is cause for celebration or, at the very least, excitement.
Leave it to Julia Morris to buck the trend – she’s not terribly thrilled about the announcement of the Australia’s Got Talent winner on Sunday.
No, she’s not bored with her hosting role on the popular Nine program or anything like that.
It’s just that having the show’s “best of the best” competing against one another, with only one emerging victorious, is “something I don’t really like because I’m so terribly fond of each and every one of them”, Morris said.
There’s plenty to be fond of, with the diverse line- up of acts making it through to the grand final including singers, dancers, acrobats and, in
Ithe case of South Australia’s Raymond Crowe, an “unusualist” – a description that gives Morris plenty of joy.
“Aren’t we all unusualists on so many levels?” she said.
Morris may be a fan of the dozen talented individuals and groups who have made it all the way through the AGT process, but even she was compelled to single out a few that had caught her attention and won her heart.
“The three- piece band Uncle Jed has a singer whose voice actually hurt our feelings – it’s so beautiful,” she said.
“And Swagamama, the Brisbane boys in the masks with their extraordinary dance style – one of them actually resigned from his job live on air to pursue this AGT dream, which I thought was terribly exciting!”
Thirteen- year- old singer Angel (“some people were convinced she was a professional performer who’d come on the show, and with that name and that voice the headlines just write themselves!”) and young dance outfit Academy of Brothers were also noteworthy and, like many AGT viewers, Morris was spellbound by the strength and agility of the wheelchair- bound Other Superman.
“That Paralympian who climbed that silk strand and spun above our heads,” she said.
Top, judges Dawn French, Timomatic, Geri Halliwell and Kyle Sandilands; right, Julia Morris with some contestant hopefuls.