The Voice has become one of the most popular TV shows in the world. The show has versions in multiple countries and has become a leading rival to Pop Idol and The X Factor, which are similar reality shows.
In the UK, there are always interesting audition candidates, but this year a surprise audition was made by Bungle, the actor who plays the life-size bear character from children’s television show ‘Rainbow’.
Actor Paul Cullinan puts Bungle’s costume on every day to take part in Rainbow. The show has been entertaining children since the 1970s, and Bungle works alongside Zippy and George in the flagship series.
But this time Paul left his Bungle costume at home in order to audition for The Voice and have a shot at singing. During the audition phase, Paul revealed his job as Bungle but only one of the judges had heard of him, 37 year old Ricky Wilson from pop band, The Kaiser Chiefs.
Another judge, Sir Tom Jones admitted that Rainbow was not his era and that Muffin the Mule was more in his age range, which was on television during the 1940s and 1950s. Meanwhile, younger judge Rita Ora also admitted not being familiar with Rainbow, but for her it was because she’s slightly younger than the other judges. (Huff Post)
The fourth judge, Will I Am had of course never heard of Rainbow since he was brought up in the United States.
Other auditionees on The Voice in the UK included Kym Marsh’s daughter Emilie. Kym Marsh was an early winner of the reality singing competitions, she won the UK show Popstars back in 2000, which eventually evolved into Pop Idol.
Singer, Rita Ora made her debut on The Voice in the UK this season. The season finale aired at the beginning of April with Scottish rock singer Stevie McCrorie, from Ricky Wilson’s team, taking the winning title.
The runner-up was Irish opera singer, Lucy O’Byrne, with judge Rita Ora. Meanwhile Sasha Simone and Emmanuel Nwamadi, who were Will I Am and Sir Tom Jones’s singers, were voted off in the semi-finals.