BGT STAR JON CATCHES UP WITH Steps’ Faye was my magic assistant.. 25 years later we’re on stage at royal show
Pair reunited as singer emerges from a glittery box during rehearsals
This year has provided so many pinch- me moments for Britain’s Got Talent victor, Jon Courtenay. The comic singer-songwriter won the ITV talent show just as coronavirus halted his work and his savings were running dry.
But perhaps his strangest experience came on stage as he rehearsed for the Royal Variety Performance.
Jon, 47, who had been a comedy magician, looked on in astonishment as his former assistant, singer Faye Tozer, emerged from Stephen Mulhern’s magic box.
He and Faye, 45, had worked together 25 years earlier, before her rise to fame in the band Steps.
Jon had not seen or spoken to her since she last emerged from his own magic box in a leotard.
He had watched her chart success with Steps and as she boogied as a celebrity guest on Strictly Come Dancing. Finally, he has joined her in the limelight.
He laughs loudly: “I said ‘I saw your rise to stardom 20 years ago – it just took me a bit longer.’ I used to do comedy magic and I used Faye once.
“It was a funny routine, she had to dress as a really old lady with a face mask and I threw her in the box. Inside she had a costume change and she came out in a leotard.
“Then we turn up at the Royal Variety and Stephen Mulhern is doing a magic trick and who’s his assistant but Faye – and she’s being put back in a box again.
“We had a right laugh about that. I watched the rehearsal before I’d even had a chance to say hello and she came off stage and said: ‘ This is all your fault, Courtenay!’
“This was the first time we had seen each other in 25 years – and there she was doing it again.”
Jon is in a very different place today
than he was a quarter-century
She had to dress up as an old lady & came out wearing a leotard
SUCCESS Jon was BGT host’s number 1 ago – indeed, from where he was a few months back. Jon won the nation’s hearts with his emotive combination of comedy and poignancy at the piano; as well as a fast track to the BGT finals as Ant and Dec’s golden buzzer act.
Until then he had spent his working life grafting as a relatively unknown performer on cruise ships around the world, missing his wife and two sons desperately. His beloved late dad Ivan taught him the piano, aged five.
Jon had tried a variety of acts but opportunity never came knocking. This year when Covid closed the industry he found himself nearing the bottom of his rainy day savings.
But now, thanks to warm lyrics about his family, parents, and the pandemic, he is a household name who is back on our screens tomorrow in the Britain’s Got Talent Christmas Special, alongside a host of the show’s favourite past performers.
He says: “Everyone in this industry is self- employed. You try to put money aside but, as a friend said, we all allow for a rainy day but no one allows for a rainy year.
“When it all stopped, the savings
JON COURTENAY ON HIS TRICK WITH FAYE TOZER
went quite quickly. If it wasn’t for this new exposure I would do what a lot of my friends have done, I am proud of them for doing it.
“I have a friend behind a bar and he’s the UK’s premier comedy juggler who worked with Cannon and Ball… but that’s what he needs to do to provide for his family.
“I might be working in a pub, Asda, as an Amazon delivery driver, whatever it takes. I have been lucky.” A
Covid scare nearly scuppered the BGT Christmas reunion, too. Jon, who lives in Manchester, was on a train to London when he got a call postponing the show but it could be rescheduled.
He got to share a dressing room with Stavros Flatley, who he described as “lovely, very down to earth”.
Even a new variant of the virus cannot halt Jon’s burgeoning career. He has performed by video link at virtual office Christmas parties and done a couple of shows in his slippers. He received amazing comments on social media after doing one virtual company party for 1,000 people. He says: “You have to remind yourself when you look down that lens that all those people are there.”
Meanwhile, he’s looking forward to Christmas with his wife Emmah, 44, and sons Nathan, 15, and Alfie, nine, who he missed so much in the past while working abroad. He met Emmah 20 years ago when she was a dancer and he was a pianist on the same production. At the Royal Variety the song he wrote for the show was dedicated to her. He has written her a Christmas song every year for 13 years, often with videos too.
“I made a stop-motion Lego video one year that took three months, with us as Lego characters. For another I dressed as Britney and did a parody of Oops!... I Did It Again.” Jon hopes to tour the UK next year talents to full use.
His biggest fans, Ant and Dec, have even promised to attend the Newcastle leg. He says: “No doubt I’ll try to involve them in the show somehow.” Perhaps he could conjure them from a glittery magician’s box?
Britain’s Got Talent Christmas Special, tomorrow at 8pm on ITV. to put his