Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
From Poundland to singing on The X Factor
Checkout Rwanda on TV tonight
IT’S a far cry from Poundland’s tills for a Northern Irish singer who will grace our TV screens this weekend as she auditions for The X Factor.
Rwanda Shaw, from Lisburn, Co Antrim, is one of thousands who auditioned for this year’s series but she actually got the chance to perform for judges Simon Cowell, Nicole Scherzinger, Louis Walsh and Sharon Osbourne.
The 21-year-old who works in the budget store loves singing and gigging at weekends and is no stranger to auditioning. She told the Mirror: “I have applied for competitions like X Factor and The Voice before and I was in a girlband, we were called Second Nature, and got to the arena stages two years ago.
“I’ve just been gigging myself over the last year so I decided to just go up myself.
“My guitarist is the manager of Cuckoo in Belfast and there was like an X Factor open mic night so I just went along and just went for it and they seemed to love it and from there on I just went through all the other
various stages.” Rwanda was shocked to learn just an hour before that she would be performing for judges.
She added: “The proper room audition was in Liverpool and I was expecting to go and just perform for the producers and then maybe a month later if they liked it to perform for the actual judges, but it was all done in the same day.
“I don’t get too nervous about things until I’m about to literally step out and do it and then I was completely fine.
“That moment when I was standing with Dermot [O’leary] and they were like, ‘right you now you can go in’, that wee split second I was like ‘Oh my goodness, this is it’.”
You can see how Rwanda gets on with her audition when X Factor returns to our screens tonight on ITV at 8pm.
X FACTOR JUDGES LET LOOSE: PAGES 26&27