It’s a rainy afternoon in Liverpool and Alison Hammond is describing her latest TV series while standing outside a branch of NatWest. “We’re inviting extraordinary people to sing the one song that means the most to them and tells their incredible story,” she shouts, blinking at us through her transparent umbrella. “Travelling across Britain, the Your Song stage will showcase amazing songs sung by remarkable people.” Is there a prize attached to this cavalcade? There is. Those deemed sufficiently extraordinary, incredible, amazing or remarkable by the judges Paloma Faith and “Eurovision legend Sam Ryder” will win the chance to perform at an abstract “once in a lifetime concert” to be held “London’s iconic Hackney Empire”.
A montage of coming attractions does little to avert the mounting sense of unease: Paloma Faith weeping as she embraces a singer in a waterproof poncho; a man shouting “I’m 90 years old!” at the wrong camera; Hammond laughing into a succession of pensioners’ faces while swaddled in a cow-patterned coat. Here, clearly, is a show prepared to meet the very specific demands of the Sunday evening schedules. Sunday evening is, after all, sacrosanct. It is the land of Esther Rantzen and Harry Secombe: any singing show that nudges its slipper into such hallowed pastures must be prepared to turn up the thermostat and dial down the thinking accordingly. And Your Song does that – to a level that could reasonably be described as nightmarish.
