From the 3rd episode of ITT – live: Hayden, our intrepid roving reporter,  gives a first hand account from his night on Cloud Nine (Coventry and Wells Streets in Southbank) with Kelly, Talia, Darren, Simon, Paulini’s two nieces and the Divine Miss P herself!

{mosimage}We interrupt this fantastic article to bring you late breaking news from our American "correspondent" – Joseph .

Paulini's album – Superwoman – has been…. wait for it …. DELAYED!!! Yes I know. What a big hooting surprise. It's now got another brand new fictitious release date of July 10. Isn't this fun …  NOT!

Sony/BMG are now officially morons.

Anyhoo, back to the fantastic story written by our very own Hayden – who could do a much better job managing Paulini's recordings than the BMG mob, with his hands tied behind his back, blindfolded and standing on his head in a bucket of wine. That's our Hayden just above this paragraph -  with his arms around Superwoman. And just below is Kel – also with arms around said Super Soul diva but you might need to click "Read more" to see it and all the other delicious photos.

 [ED:The video of Simon and Paulini singing Knew You Were Waiting for Me is now available as a streaming video at YouTube and can also be downloaded at FileFront (vindiezels pages)

{mosimage}I apologise in advance, this review might seem a little ragged because I wrote it while still  delirious from a massive dose of the Curuenavirus.

Where to begin? The beginning I guess…After all our hoping and praying that we’d be in block F like last week so we could say hi to all the celebs before the show, we were a bit disappointed that we were put in block A. That is, until we realised that this week the celebs waited behind block A. LOL.

Anyway, the first celebrity we see is Mark Furze, whom Talia loves! She shows him her “Mark Marry Me” sign, and gets a laugh and a wink out of him. Not quite as good a reaction as I got for my “Paulini Marry Me” sign last week, but still good nonetheless.

Then Paulini comes out, hair in curls, wearing a gorgeous purple dress. Kelly sees her and starts waving, and Paulini smiles and waves back, then I start waving, and she keeps smiling that gorgeous smile of hers and waves back. We put our banner over the side, but unfortunately she left before she saw it. But when she and Simon came back a couple of minutes later we were ready, and they were both absolutely gob-smacked when they saw it! They’re both like “Oh, Thank You!”I say to Paulini “Do you want us to meet you in the foyer this time?” and she gives a laugh and thumbs up, and then I say, “Break a leg… it worked for David,” to which she starts laughing hysterically. How much do I LOVE that laugh!

Anyway, once again they left Paulini’s performance until towards the end of the show, but once she and Simon did come out; we were having the time of our lives. They did an amazing rendition of Aretha Franklin and George Michael’s “Knew You Were Waiting For Me.” Paulini doing Aretha is just so RIGHT. Simon was a bit off, but there’s not much we can do about that. We weren’t very impressed with the judges’ comments, but I was pleasantly surprised how high their score was (no thanks to Ross Wilson who only gave them a six!) Paulini later told us she was so scared of getting the score, she said she was thinking at the time, “Oh my God they’re going to give us fours! Please don’t be zeroes!” LMAO! [ed: as IF]

{mosimage}Once Paulini and Simon finished singing we started waving our banner like crazy, but the only shot they did of us was one with us in the background.

A bit disappointed, we sat down once the judges started talking, but then John Deaks and the stage manager started gesturing for us to get back up – they wanted to do a close up, which we gladly obliged to do. Watching it back last night I laughed, because while I was holding the banner I looked to the left to see what we looked like on the plasma screen LOL!

All in all, it was another great performance for Paulini, and in our ecstasy we screamed like crazy and waved the banner again when the hosts said she was safe for another week. At the end John Deaks thanked us for making that banner, said it really lifted the mood of the show, and in the background Kelly saw a hand moving in the back of the green room. It was Paulini waving, so Kelly starts waving back and when I see what she’s doing I start waving too. Talia and Darren were too slow though .
 
Once the show ended we headed straight for the foyer, which is where Paulini said she’d wait for us. After a little while Simon came out, and we asked him to sign our banner, which he GLADLY did. It was so funny, the only way we could get the banner flat was to spread it out on the floor, so Simon had to kneel down and bend over to sign it. I said, “I bet you’ve never done anything like this before,” and he laughed and said “No.” He then agreed to have a photo with all of us, and thanked us again for making the banner, saying how impressed he was.

Unfortunately then we were kicked out of the foyer because they were closing up the studio, so we asked the security guard if there was an exit the celebrities come out of, and he told us where it was (on Wells street).Waiting there a bit, the person on duty at the desk told us that everyone would be at the after party, which was next to the audience entry on Coventry Street, where we had just been. Back we go and wait at the gate where the after-party is, and Kelly asks the security guard at the gate there if it would be at all possible for him to get Paulini to come speak to us. He said he couldn’t because they were doing publicity at the time, but that it would be over within the half hour and they definitely will come out of the exit on Wells street.

{mosimage}So once again, back we go to the exit on Wells street, and finally, who do we see walking over the footbridge, but Paulini. Within the next couple of minutes she and her two nieces came out of the door. 
She sees us and is all like “Oh My God, Hi! How are you guys? Thanks so much for coming back and waving the banner, it was so cool! Did you want me to sign some stuff for you?”

To which we’re all like “Yes please.” [ed: DUH!]It was so funny. Jacki, you’re really going to appreciate this. Kelly, Talia and I each have a Young Divas single for her to sign, and Paulini says in a funny voice “Right, so it’s YOU people that have been buying these things! They want us to record another single now!” LOL, it appears she is as unimpressed by the whole Young Divas idea as we were but it gave me the perfect opportunity to ask one of the questions we had been planning to:

I asked: “I don’t suppose you know what the new single is going to be?” to which she replied “No, they haven’t told us yet.”

So obviously they haven’t even started with the second single.

{mosimage}I said, “I’m sorry, I’ve got this CD here too,” and showed her my copy of So Over You. I told her “I was going to bring the rest of my CDs but I thought any more than two would be a bit excessive.” She laughs and replies “Oh that’s so sweet.”
 
She let us take as many photos with her as we liked. Her nieces took group photos of us, and we each had some great individual shots done as well, including a photo of me and Paulini giving each other a gigantic hug.ed:where are the pics???]

I told her that Kelly, Talia and I would be going to the Young Divas concerts, and Kelly said, “Hayden and I are going to all three.”

Paulini laughed and says “All three?! Surely you’ve got better things to spend your money on.” Then Kelly asked if Paulini had spoken to Bek, and Paulini replied, “I actually haven’t. I have her old number but I think she must have changed it because I haven’t been able to contact her for months.” What a shame.

We got to talking about the fan-listing, and Paulini says “I really have to visit it. Could one of you please write down the web address for me?” And as luck would have it, Kelly had printed out another of the “Official Fan-listing” posters we held up last week to give to her.

Paulini took it, thanked us and promised to visit, saying that she thought it was great, just by what we were telling her about it. I told her she’d need to register if she wanted to use the shout box or most of the facilities and I said “you can call yourself Paulini or whatever you want,” which made her laugh again. She then asked if we were all locals, and Kelly said “not really, Hayden and I live about an hour away,” but I butted in “We’re all from Melbourne though, obviously, so we can definitely keep coming back,” and that got Paulini laughing again. She’s such a delight to be around and I don’t think she’d laughed so much in her life.

When she finished thanking us all for coming and supporting her, we were about to leave, but she asked, “So are you guys coming to the next show?” and we replied, “We’ll try, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to get tickets again,” and then came the few words that made my night, she said, “Mate, I can probably get V.I.P. tickets for you guys. Could one of you please give me your phone number, and then I can tell you if I get them.” All of us were stunned. None of us thought she’d care enough about us to try and get V.I.P. tickets for us. I ended up fumbling for a pen and wrote my phone number on the back of her Divine Miss P poster – it took a little while for me to remember what it was though, it’s not every day your Idol asks you for your phone number.Once I finished I got another laugh out of the Divine Miss P because I said, “I think that’s right.”

{mosimage}Finally, we decided it was time to go, so we thanked Paulini again for signing our stuff and taking photos and she’s like “Mates, anything for you guys! Thanks again for all your support and the banner, it was so good!”
On the way home we realised that we had only asked about half the questions we had planned to, but if she gets us V.I.P. tickets we’ll be able to ask her then.

It was such an amazing experience, and I’m so glad we made Paulini’s day. If you read this THANKS SO MUCH FOR THE AMAZING NIGHT PAULINI! {moscomment}