To mark the 10th anniversary of his television appearances Peter Holding, Pro
Mobile’s editor, sat down with Allan to discuss his passion for music and DJing and his incredible journey as an entertainer.

Alan’s story is one of talent, perseverance and uniquely ‘Allan’ moments, but above all, relentless ambition.

Q: What made you start out as a DJ?

A: I actually started out as a music producer and choreographer. In my teens, I put boy bands together and we used to play anywhere we could and I would take care of all the music. It’s something I could always do. If I'm honest, I didn't then look at it as a proper profession, I just thought anyone could put music together. And when I watched proper DJs, I thought they must be doing something else because people are going so wild for them.

I always thought it was really important to create my own music. I have probably recorded more than 50 songs, and I got a couple of record deals during my earliest years. But I wasn’t really going out as a DJ, more a performer.

Q: Did you have any success selling your recordings?

A: I had one song [‘Shake The Knees’, more on this later - Ed] that went out on RCA Records, got to number one on German MTV, and was also number one in Austria and Holland. It was actually the worst song I had ever written! It was the least serious, most tongue-in-cheek, and took me all of 10 minutes to write.

We even made a video which cost around £100,000! I thought I was going to be this massive 24-year-old star and suddenly I was dropped and needed to do something else to keep working.

Q: What was your next move?

A: This was when I doubled up as an entertainer and became the equivalent of a red coat and went all over Europe and even North Africa. I was on stage every day. The one thing we had to do when finishing our entertainment was to DJ for an hour. That was when I first started out behind the decks.

Q. How has working as an entertainer helped with being a DJ?

A: Well, you spend a lot of time leading silly dances, very cheesy. But you do learn your craft because you're getting heckled and you are working all day with a mic.

Q: What was your next move?

A: I went to Los Angeles to chase the dream! At that point I still saw myself as an entertainer, I used to do warm-up before TV shows and I also got a job working for Disney in Anaheim. They took me on as an MC, but then I realised I could DJ as well, because I've always been doing it, so I even worked on Disney weddings as a DJ.

I was also the warm-up host for American Gladiator, Hell’s Kitchen, for Donald Trump on The Apprentice, and I even did stints for Stan Lee at Marvel. I was lucky enough to work with and meet some really, really amazing people. I spent five years in LA pursuing the dream of becoming an actor or a TV show host, but I had a major visa problem and had to come back home.

Q: What happened then?

A: In Bournemouth there weren't many options for movies or TV shows! I had a mentor at the time who worked in the entertainment industry. He was a very wise owl, and said to me, “Alan, you're all over the place. You need to just choose what you do really well. I've seen you DJ. You might not think it's a real profession, but you're really good at it.” I set out building my DJ work and was doing well in my local area. I was even going out to Dubai to DJ New Year’s Eve.

At the time I could see that there were big names getting the big DJ gigs, even though they weren’t actually very good. So, I decided to go on Britain's Got Talent. I tried twice but didn’t get very far. I went on as a serious mixing DJ and wanted to prove that I was a really good. I really cared about credibility. I never got past the tea boy.

Q: How did you finally manage to get on the show?

A: I left it a couple of years, and for the 2014 show, I went for it again. I remember just thinking, actually, you know, if I fall over, it could work better. I decided to play the idiot. I suddenly realised that Britain's Got Talent has got zero to do with talent, but everything to do with entertainment. You must have a sob story, or be hugely comical, or you need to be sensationally brilliant, so much so that that people can't take their eyes off of you. If you haven’t got one of those three, you won’t make the show regardless. I'm not sensationally brilliant and I also lacked a sob story, so I thought, right, I'll be that silly guy.

Q: So you decided to ham it up?

A: I had a game plan. I went up to Birmingham and made sure that I got staff to help me with my full set of speakers, which were really heavy. This helped me to get noticed. I started to get through the different rounds using my own song ‘Model Pose’, which they seemed to love. I also had to do several interviews and had to do loads of writing about everything I’d ever done.

The whole thing lasted about eight months – it's a proper journey. All of a sudden I was told that I would be meeting the judges in three weeks.

Q: What was your first experience of appearing on the show like?

A: I was there for around 10 hours. It's a punishing schedule of interviews and they're filming you having conversations with people all day. And eventually I got on stage. I remember waiting backstage and listening to a comedian being ripped to shreds. Suddenly a producer told me to walk around the corner where Ant and Dec were waiting. “They're gonna know your name,” he said.

I was, of course, in awe, because I love Ant and Dec. So I decided to play it cool. I greeted them with an, “Alright lads?” I think Declan thought I was going to be some serious Calvin Harris kind of character. I don't think they were expecting what I did.

I was on stage for half an hour. That gets edited to about four minutes, but with the initial four minutes of build-up I had a pretty large amount of footage for my first appearance. I was on the stage talking about America and they asked me if I had any previous success. I told them about my hit in Europe and that it was connected to Simon Cowell’s label. He went, “Yeah, yeah, I remember.” I still don’t know if that was true.

Simon seemed really interested in the fact that I had produced what I was going to perform. But of course, within the first verse or two, he buzzed me! That thing is really loud, it really goes through you! I thought, well, I've got no hope here.
But Simon was grinning while he did it and he was glued to me, so I'm thinking, well, he doesn't hate it. And then he was literally telling the other three to get up in a kind of ‘you love it, I hate it’ way, and he winked at me. I thought to myself, oh, that's how this works.

Then I walked out to the front and obviously thought I wasn’t going to get through. But David Walliams loved it and asked the audience if they wanted to hear it again! The whole crowd roared for more and off I went again. I remember thinking that it was amazing to have a second shot, so at that point I used every one of my entertainment skills. “Right, I want everybody on their feet.” Simon was saying, “Alan, would you just get on with it?”

But it went really, really well. It's just bizarre how it was edited to look like Simon hated me. But actually, if he didn't like me, there's no way in the world I would have got through.

Q: How many times were you on the show?

A: Probably about three or four occasions on the main show and three or four on Britain’s Got More Talent. They gave me a massive amount of exposure. It’s really not so much about how far you get, but about the amount of exposure they give you. You might get to the finals but find that they've only shown little snippets of you because you’re, say, a really good singer. But you’d don’t actually get on the TV that much.

Q: Were your performances done live?

A: For the auditions, yes. It was all from my system. That said, they did mess with my settings. They want to see how you're going to cope under the camera. And then for the semi-finals, what they did was really, really naughty. They insisted that I didn’t need to be live, I just had to pretend that I was DJing. But they didn't connect my mixer at all, so it was clear that none of it was plugged in.

I woke up the next day to a huge wall of online hate, people were freeze framing the empty sockets. I actually got voted the worst DJ in the world on Yahoo!. Not just the worst in England, the worst in the world!

Q: That sounds like a terrible backlash.

A: I did the whole thing as a step up, but in a weird, weird way, it was a sort of step back as well. People would shout some quite abusive things. And the hate online was just painful. But I can understand how people who are technical would ask how I could be talented if the system wasn’t plugged in.

It happens quite a lot. It even happened to David Guetta, who was on X Factor as a special guest. None of his equipment was plugged in.

Q: What was it like when you lost in the semi-finals?

A: It was a sudden halt. During the filming you have this intense pressure with producers calling you every day, sometimes several times a day. And then it’s like you’ve been dumped by the love of your life.
They literally just say to you, “That's it, thanks for coming.” And suddenly, they don't call you anymore. There's nothing to discuss, it's just over.

Q: What was the effect on your work after your appearances?

A: I thought it would get me loads of gigs! But I didn't get booked for two months because people didn’t want to book that guy from the show. I had been building a nice local presence but the show made me look a bit silly. People were put off or assumed I would be too expensive.

I remember my mother telling me that at every gig I did play at, I needed to act as if it was my last because otherwise people would think I was a bit of a joke. It took about two months to get rolling and then, all of a sudden, the work came in. Apart from lockdown, I haven’t had many weekends off since.

Q: What are you up to now?

A: I do a lot of mobile stuff for parties and occasionally weddings. I'm also on two different radio stations, one of which is syndicated. And then I work in a number of bars, which I love. Last weekend I played support for Martin Kemp at the O2 in Bournemouth, which was amazing. And I’m appearing at a couple of upcoming summer festivals.

I don’t want to come across as big-headed, but I’ve created my own brand I’m going to keep working on it. I’m lucky enough to have a lot of followers in Dorset and we get together and have great big cheesey parties. It’s complete chaos, absolutely brilliant, and I love every minute.