George Sampson has come a long way from the Britain's Got Talent stage, writes TARA BRADY, and the all-singing, all-dancing, all-acting man is still only 18
IF GEORGE SAMPSON didn’t exist, X-Factor or The Voice or Britain’s Got Talent – take your pick – would have been forced to hire someone in to play a kid just like him.
Back in 2007 an uncharacteristically enthusiastic Simon Cowell failed to persuade fellow Britain’s Got Talent jurors Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan to let Sampson, a brilliant 12-year-old street dance protégé, to progress to the series semi-finals.
Unbowed, the plucky little fellow went back on the streets of Warrington to prove his worth as a hoofer and earn extra cash for his single mum, a classroom assistant with five kids and a mortgage. He returned, triumphant, to Britain’s Got Talent series two a year later, winning £100,000 and a slot at the Royal Variety Performance.
“I never knew what I was stepping into,” he says. “I didn’t know what was beginning. It’s only now, four-and-a-half years later, that I’m half expecting what to expect. It still feels like it was only last year. It’s mad to think it was that long ago. It seems like a blur when I think back on it.”
Fourteen-and-a-half million viewers tuned in to ITV to see his victorious performance of Singin’ in the Rain. And just to complete the Cinderella story, we learned that George had been diagnosed with Scheuermann’s disease, a condition that affects developing bones in children and teenagers and which is associated with curvature of the spine. Doesn’t that make dancing just that bit trickier to master?
“It doesn’t help,” he shrugs. “I’m not as flexible as I should be. But it doesn’t really get in the way. When I’m dancing and I’m moving I don’t even know it’s there. It’s when I’m still or sitting down that it starts to cramp.”
Is it a kind of therapy, gaining control over unruly, uncooperative bits of his anatomy?
“Well, it is,” he says. “I’m so skinny and light I kind of know what I’m doing with myself at all times. I know whatever happens I can carry myself and stay on my feet. My back gives me problems here and there but I’m in control at all times. It’s nothing too major. Nothing I can’t manage. And I’m hoping to grow out it. Give me another year and I’ll be fine.”
There are no other dancers in his family and he has only a vague sense memory of how he came to tap his way toward TV glory. He started when he was six, he says. “I remember watching a show and I saw this guy do a back flip. And it changed me. I just thought, that’s what I want to do. That’s what I’m going to do. And that was that.”
Post-BGT, Cowell’s label Syco nabbed Sampson to make a dance video. But it was not the impresario’s first medium. Sampson was about to discover talent television’s dirtiest open secret: it pays to come second. (Just ask Susan Boyle or Flawless.)
The young breakdancer spent a month in London’s West End in the hip-hop musical Into the Hoods. But in those pre-Diversity days – a whole year before we became accustomed to touring blockbuster dance shows – Cowell and Sampson quickly ran out of things to do.
“I have seen it change,” says Sampson. “It’s a bit difficult for me because when I came along there weren’t that many things for a dancer to do. I went to the West End. And that was the biggest highlight that any dancer could look forward to. But now there are so many TV shows and contracts out there for dancers. It’s brilliant to see how it’s progressed.”
Cowell hoped to reposition the youngster as a recording artist. In this spirit, Sampson recorded a double-sided single, Get Up on the Dance Floor/Headz Up, for the X Factor mogul, but the pair soon parted ways. Was it wrenching, we wonder, getting dumped by a man who wears fuchsia?
“Not at all,” says the 18-year-old. “We were a team on it. It was just difficult for us to work out what to do with me. Once the West End run finished there was no place left for me to go. I knew what I wanted to do but the opportunities weren’t there back then. They were all about recording acts and I wasn’t one. We didn’t split. We’re still friends. It just wasn’t to be at that time. For me to do what I wanted to do we had to try and take a little break. I still email him quite a bit. We keep in touch.”
The fallout from BGT has not necessarily been easy for the Sampson family either. Unfounded stories about his sister Chelsea walking the streets in a professional capacity and grossly exaggerated stories about his mum dumping sacks of fan mail made unlikely and mean-spirited tabloid headlines.
It was tough on everybody for a while, admits Sampson. “They’re happy now,” he says. “They’ve settled down with it. It took a little while. My sister’s off in Australia and everybody is doing what they want to do. But it was crazy.”
As it happens, Sampson has managed perfectly well without his reality show buddies. Having amassed more than £1 million from promotional deals with Nat West, Nokia, Rugby League and LegoLand, his days of dance busking are well and truly over.
“I can’t complain,” he grins. “It’s been the best four years of my life. People always tell you hard work pays off and I’ve been working my arse off to keep it going.”
His many engagements post-BGT prevented young Master Sampson from returning properly to school. But he did travel with a tutor. “I did better with the private tutor than I ever would have managed at school,” he says. “Now I wish I had maybe paid a bit more attention but I was always one of those kids who basically came in for the lunch break.” And he has, indeed, returned to the classroom, albeit as Waterloo Road’s resident bad boy, Kyle Stack.
“I’ve finished filming now,” he says. “My last 10 eps are currently on TV. Once those finish that’s me done. It all coincides with the storyline. And I absolutely loved it. The fact that what I call work is me going into a school and absolutely trashing it? Being bad is great.”
Today, as if to pull that little bit harder at the heartstrings, Sampson has a touch of the sniffles. “Bit of the cold: bad sniffles, bad cough, bit of an eventful weekend, mad excited,” he offers apologetically.
The cause of his sniffled exhilaration is StreetDance 2. The dazzling follow-up to StreetDance 3D, a runaway hit and a showcase for British acts such as Sampson, Diversity and Flawless, hits cinemas in the UK and Ireland this weekend. This time around, the directors and choreographers have widened the net to include the hottest dance acts from all over Europe.
“It was a good multicultural vibe,” he says. “Very open. We did auditions in Paris before we started filming with all these breakdancers from around Europe. It’s amazing the way they all bring their own culture to it. The French guys are really into [the outdoor obstacle-traversing practice of] parkour so that turns up in their stuff. And then we had different choreographers. Our American choreographers were very military and American and intense. And the Latin stuff was rock solid hard. Really difficult. Its like urban gymnastics slash salsa. Or fighting-dancing. It’s wicked. It’s very aggressive. But it’s a killer.”
How did he get on with his new Euro-chums?
“We travelled together and stayed together and it was brilliant,” says George. “People often think dancers are bitchy. But that’s a load of bollox.”
Will he continue to dance beyond the fabulous StreetDance sequel? Will he act? Is there such a compound as dactor?
“I’d like to think my career will involve more than dance. I don’t know. Its a difficult situation to be in. I know a lot more than I did four years ago. But the more things I try, the more things I want to keep on. Since I started acting I’ve really fallen in love with it. Then again if people know me at all it’s for my dancing and I would love to make a career out of that. I want both. I think.”
Happily, at 18, Sampson is just warming up.
StreetDance 2 is out today.
