Nostalgia: Crowds turn out in force to support X Factor’s Rhydian
Today we step back in time to December 2007 and Rhydian Roberts is making his bid to win that year's X-Factor final.
IN 2007 the year the world was introduced to Rhydian Roberts in his bid to win that year’s X-Factor.
“Without you I wouldn’t be in this privileged position.”
That was Rhydian’s message to the South Wales Echo readers as he paid a visit to the city to meet his fans just days before the X Factor final.
Greeted by screaming hordes of mums, sons, daughters, grandmothers and granddads outside the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, Rhydian said he had been bowled over by the support he had received.
“I want to say thank you to all the Echo readers who have believed in me and voted for me,” he said.
“It’s the final on Saturday, but the nerves are fine actually. I am more excited than anything. I will be ecstatic, elated, if I win.”
Despite the plunging temperature, the 24-year-old classically-trained singer, whose family hails from Cardiff, took time to meet those who had travelled from across South Wales to see him.
Among them was 24-year-old Rhiannon Wynne from Aberdare, a trainee RE teacher at Bishop of Llandaff School in Cardiff and former classmate of Rhydian’s at Llandovery College, Carmarthenshire.
“I just wanted to come and support him. I think he’s definitely going to win,” she said.
Ten-year-old Jessica Kingdon, a Whitchurch High pupil, said: “I was very excited to find out he was coming to Cardiff and I didn’t mind waiting in the cold to see him.”
