THOUSANDS of music fans queued for hours outside the SSE Hydro in Glasgow at the weekend for a chance to attend MTV's prestigious European Music Awards on Sunday.
MTV bosses auditioned dancers, rappers and gymnasts to be part of the cast for the awards, which will be hosted by American rapper Nicki Minaj. Among those performing will be Ed Sheeran, Calvin Harris and Ariana Grande. Organisers also wanted to recruit more than 2,000 "screamers" whose role is to create as much noise as possible at the awards show.
A panel of judges, including Capital Radio DJ Garry Spence, watched would-be performers do their best to impress them in just 60 seconds.
Father-of-two Jordan Howat was delighted to be given a ticket after he wrote a rap inspired by the EMA.
The labourer, who lives in Cumbernauld with his partner Nicole and their daughters Niamh, three, and 10-month-old Aaliyah, has another reason to celebrate - he turns 23 on the same date as the awards.
He said: "One of the reasons I came to audition is because it's my birthday on Sunday, so I wanted to have a party on my party. I've never done anything like that before. I've never performed in front of a judging panel so it was really scary. But I couldn't believe how nice they were. I do get told a lot by my friends that I'm talented, but I don't have much self-belief so this has given me a really big boost."
University student Kayleigh Thornton, 18, teamed up with her friends Abbie Draper, 24, Clayr Doolan, 30 and Symone Callaghan, 28, to perform a dance routine influenced by previous EMA shows.
Kayleigh, from the east end of Glasgow, said: "We're all dancers so we thought it would be fun to get together and do a routine for this. It was so much fun and we couldn't believe it when we were given tickets. I think I'm going to have a sore throat next Monday because I'll be screaming so much."
Anastasia Radchenko, 23, who is captain of the Strathclyde Warriors cheerleading squad, impressed with her gymnastic skills. She said: "Performing in front of the judges was a blast - we can only imagine how amazing the EMA's will be."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article