Tashi: There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding the voting and the fact that most of the black contestants were voted out first - what’s your take on this?
Mathew: I think that the country and those voting should see the winning Idol outside of the competition and not just in this huge stage where you have people paying to scream at you.
They should see it as: “Are you going to buy this guy’s album after the competition? Are you going to buy tickets to their concert afterwards?”
I think that pretty much, right now in the competition, it’s about who you know and how you use the Idols experience.
Mathew sparkling a wineglass, as he does before a shift.
Tashi: Do you mean it’s about how many people you know that are actually voting?
Mathew: Very much - it’s about how many people you know that are willing to vote and invest in you. I think that some people might have fallen out because they didn’t have a big enough network to keep them in. I believe that the competition shouldn't rely on this to find a winner - I would like to have a professional opinion to oversee the process.
I’m just scared of the outcome in the end - people might think that the final winner won because they had the money to get there.
Obviously the public needs to vote but you also need a professional opinion. Yes they do have judges but they don’t have a say.
Tashi: And they’re useless aren’t they?
Mathew: No no, I don’t think so at all. They're really nice people offstage and onstage, I think they’ve made up their minds already about who they’d like to win.
If it’s an extremely bad performance they’ll let the person know but because they don’t have a say I think they like to remain as positive as possible towards the contestants.
Tashi: Often I feel as if I’m watching a different show from them - they’ll go “Oh that was wonderful,” and yet the song was totally out of tune as far as I could hear and I’m like “
huh??” - it’s like being in the twilight zone.
The
whole business of official-partner radio stations supporting certain contestants and not others - talk to us about that.
Mathew on the Star stage
Mathew: Yes lots people had a problem with contestants complaining because Cameron was backed by two Jo’burg radio stations. People subconsciously agree with a lot of what they hear and see, so if you keep hearing about the same person on a radio station you’ll subsconsciously have them top of mind.
Tashi: Absolutely - how did it happen? Which station?
Mathew: They saw Cameron and decided to back him - it was Highveld. What Kfm did was, they ran a poll and said “These are the three contestants from Cape Town, which is best?” - which I think is more fair than saying “These are the five Jo’burg contestants, we’re backing one.”
Tashi: It’s not fair at all, - what happened behind the scenes about it?
Mathew: We all knew each other really personally and we saw it as “Whatever happens, happens and we don’t have control of it. “ Cameron didn’t say they must support him, he couldn’t help it so we all just supported each other.
We spoke about it all a lot, we spoke to Cameron about it and we all needed to understand the fact that he couldn’t help it. He’s a very nice guy, it put him in a position where everyone could turn on him.
Tashi: Who do you want to win? Who do you think should win?