A former binman from the North-East will represent Romania in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. Jim Entwistle speaks to karaoke singer turned pop star David Bryan.

WHEN David Bryan was working on the bins around Shildon, Ferryhill and Bishop Auckland, in County Durham, pop stardom was but a distant dream.

Four years later, the 26-year-old is on the verge of taking to the stage at the world’s biggest music showcase – the Eurovision Song Contest.

Mr Bryan’s remarkable journey began, and was nearly snuffed out, at New College, Durham, where he was unable to complete a performing arts course because of financial pressures on his family.

He returned home to Newton Aycliffe to work in factories and as a binman.

But he said yesterday he had always harboured a dream to perform.

“I’ve been performing all my life and I always wanted to be on stage or in front of a camera,” he said. “Russell Crowe used to be a binman.”

But it took a lucky break while in Romania, where he had been volunteering and subsequently fell in love with a local girl, to hand him his opportunity.

Spotted doing karaoke by music manager Florin Budeu, Mr Bryan was signed up to join a touring cabaret band.

Since then, he has also formed a Pink Floyd tribute act, Speak Floyd, and has nearly completed a project to put all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets to song. But it is his work with Hotel FM, the band with which he is lead singer, and which he hopes to lead to Eurovision victory in Dusseldorf, Germany, that he is most excited about.

The group was chosen by the Romanian public during a five-hour live television marathon on New Year’s Eve.

The former Greenfield School pupil said: “When I told my mum about it she was ecstatic, jumping all over the place. Now we are just hoping we get support from people back home in the UK.”

Hotel FM will perform to an estimated 600 million television audience at the Eurovision Song Contest in May. The new format sees all countries, apart from five, split into two semi-finals, with those qualifying progressing to the final.

The United Kingdom automatically qualifies because of the financial contribution it makes to the contest.