The inside of the studio being readied for Monday's premiere. The studio's in a penthouse in Sea Point and includes balconies that overlook Cape Town.
SABC3's new breakfast show Expresso premiered at the crack of dawn on Monday (4 October). At 05h30 to be exact. About two hours after I went to snooze, ha. Seriously.
It has a lifestyle, "kickstart your day" angle, hosted by four full-time presenters:
Liezel van der Westhuizen: post Idols-fiasco. As tweeted when it exploded, M-Net/Idols apparently told her she had to choose between doing Idols and Expresso. One moment it was fine for her to do both and the next it wasn't.
Ewan Strydom, who's left M-Net's celeb'ertainment show All Access. According to Expresso producer Patience Stevens, he's been cast because the show felt him and his muscles were being wasted on All Access.
Michael Mol, who's taking on the role of: "Please inspect me Doctor, I'm feeling oogy woogy." He'll be leaving Top Billing soon to be on Expresso exclusively - once the show finds a new presenter in the
Presenter Search that's still unfolding.
And Katlego Maboe, who's ditching wildlife to go to bed at 21h00. This is the sort of time everyone has to knockout if they want to arrive on set without babelaas-eyes.
Katlego made his TV debut last year on the
DEKAT show and is currently presenting on 50/50. He'll be with
50/50 for another month and will then be with Expresso exclusively.
In between singing on Idols. Turns out he's also a singer, who's part of a five-guy acapella group called Flip A Coin - Katlego's the beatbox specialist. They started the group by singing covers and now they're performing their own tracks.
I chinwagged to Katlego on Monday morning just after Expresso premiered and he told me that the moment they started singing their own compositions at live shows was when the group really got noticed.
They've been booked to sing at Huisgenoot's Skouspel later this year and they'll be featured on Idols soon - on next week's episode, on Sunday 17 October.
They'll be singing the backing music for the contestants, who'll perform to their voices only. Here's a link to their website with samples of their sound:
Flip A Coin. (The sound samples are in the Media section.)
I'd highly recommend starting with the Michael Jackson one. Then go to Queen.