TV talent show winner on what happened when the fame wore off

Tommy Reilly was still a teenager when he won Channel 4's Orange Unsigned Act

Tommy Reilly was just 19 when he entered a Channel 4 talent show which promised a recording contract, a £60,000 lump sum and the chance of a career in music.

Against all his own expectations, the singer-songwriter from Torrance, East Dunbartonshire, went on to win the show.

But after 18 months, and a couple of chart hits, he became disillusioned with the pop star life. He returned to Glasgow to enrol in art college.

Now 35, he has reinvented himself as a hugely successful, Emmy-award winning composer for film and TV shows.

Reilly travelled from Glasgow to London with his father to enter the Orange Unsigned Act contest in 2009, but he never expected to win.

He had hoped it would give him a route to getting some gigs in London and meeting people in the industry.

"The next thing you know you've been on the telly every Sunday for four months," he told Paul English on BBC Radio Scotland's Afternoon Show.

"The whole thing got completely out of control."

During the recording of the show he met stars like Lily Allen, The View, McFly and Alex James from Blur.

"You'd meet all these amazing people, and they were being nice about the music - it was some buzz," he said.

And when he won, he found the perks of being a pop star began immediately and the money quickly landed in his bank account.

"They literally just sent you the money, it was bonkers," he said.

Reilly mixed with stars including Jo Whiley, Alex James, Alex Zane and Lauren Laverne after winning the talent show

He sensibly used the money to buy a flat, while his debut single Gimme a Call peaked at number 14 in the Official UK Singles Chart.

The musician was living the dream, performing at festivals and gigs across the UK and Europe but he found the demands of a pop star's life uncomfortable.

He said he was "very resistant" to requests to get his hair cut and wear certain clothes, and he was uncomfortable when he was recognised in the street.

"I was maybe not cut out for that kind of thing which was a good thing to realise very young," he said.

"It was amazing to get a taste of it and have an amazing year and a half doing all these crazy festivals, going to America, playing all over Europe, all these crazy shows.

"But the promotional side of it and it all being on you - the sort of industry part of it - I was really not cut out for."

Reilly performed at festivals across the UK and Europe

So what happened next? "Not much," Reilly said.

"It definitely slowed down. Then I tried to to repeat the trick a bit, made a couple more records but really it was slowing down for sure."

He returned to Glasgow and, having always harboured an ambition to work on music for films, he jumped at the chance to work on a Scottish indie movie.

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With Roddy Hart, another Scottish singer-songwriter and composer, he wrote the music and the score for Anna and the Apocalypse.

The success of the zombie musical, which was filmed in a former school in Port Glasgow, opened doors in Hollywood to the musical collaborators.

The pair eventually got the chance to pitch to write the music for a rebooted series of the classic cartoon series Animaniacs.

When they landed the job, they received an email telling them Steven Spielberg - the series' executive producer - had listened to their work.

"I loved the cartoon as a kid and [Spielberg] is a hero," Reilly said. "It's just surreal, very very odd, very amazing, just an unbelievable thing, stuff you wouldn't have thought you'd get to do."

And then things got even more surreal when they scooped a Daytime Emmy for one of their Animaniacs compositions - Suffragette City - in 2021.

"It's madness, a dream," he said.

Now Reilly is celebrating his work on the new BBC One thriller Nightsleeper, set on a sleeper train between Glasgow and London.

It's a far cry from the pop star life that he was living 15 years ago - but he's happy to have finally got the balance right.

"The thing that has never changed is that I love making music," he said.

"What's so good about making film stuff and working in this world is I get to do the bit I really like, and then some of the other stuff that came with the music industry, that I wasn't drawn to, isn't part of this.

"You do your bit, hand it in, then the film comes out."