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Ross / Rylan
subject to credit approval.
Men's Wearhouse Announcer
Okay, caller one wins courtside seats to tonight's game. What? I won floor seats. You did? I've been calling for 13 months. Wait. Chris.
Jake Stauch
Yes.
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Ross / Rylan
Congrats.
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Ross / Rylan
Hello, everyone.
Jamie Lang
I'm Jamie Lang, and this is Great Moments. Hello, everyone. This is Great Moments where I share some of my favorite moments from my conversations on Great Company. Something that's made me think, made me laugh or changed my perspective. And hopefully, hopefully, there's something in it for you, too. So are you ready? Let's get into it. I don't think you remember this, but I remember this the greatest.
Ross / Rylan
When we slept together. Yeah.
Jamie Lang
Do you remember that?
Ross / Rylan
Not really.
Jamie Lang
Okay, well, my memory's a bit hazy.
Ross / Rylan
Yeah, it's a little bit hazy. You weren't the only one.
Jamie Lang
Do you remember this moment when we were in the car together? We weren't in the car together. We were. I was in the car and I was singing a song.
Ross / Rylan
See, you don't. I think I do remember this.
Jamie Lang
Do you remember this? We were singing song. I think it was like a Britney Spears song or whatever it was. And I was singing along like this. And it was something like, hit me, baby, one more time.
Ross / Rylan
Oh, my God.
Jamie Lang
Sorry.
Ross / Rylan
I thought Brittany was here.
Jamie Lang
I know she is. Yes. And I look to my right and I pull up to you, and you're singing exactly the same song. And I was like, was that you?
Ross / Rylan
I've been looking for you for years. And I even realized I thought I was meant to be.
Jamie Lang
And I don't. And you're going, hit me, baby, I swear to God. And you look at me and when.
Ross / Rylan
And just drove.
Jamie Lang
And I was like, I hate myself. Honestly, I remember this, so you don't.
Ross / Rylan
It definitely sounds like me. Yeah.
Jamie Lang
I didn't realize that your real name is Ross.
Ross / Rylan
Who told you that? Yeah, my real name's Ross.
Jamie Lang
Ross Richard Clark.
Ross / Rylan
Yeah. Dick in the middle.
Jamie Lang
Born 25th of October. Same year that I was born. But we're not going to say that year.
Ross / Rylan
88.
Jamie Lang
Yeah, you said it. Fine, 88.
Ross / Rylan
Someone's been on Wikipedia, haven't they? Nice to see the researchers in here.
Jamie Lang
When did you change your name to Rylan?
Ross / Rylan
Well, I never legally changed it.
Jamie Lang
Did you not?
Ross / Rylan
I'm still Ross. But, yeah, it was when I was about 16, 17. I was working in River Island.
Jamie Lang
Yeah.
Ross / Rylan
And at the same time, I was modeling because I've always been, like, 40 foot tall. And I did a modeling job for this, like, Concierge company at Canary Wharf. And it was basically the most naff photo shoot of, like, me with a bunch of flowers knocking on a door. Here you go, madam. Like, that awful style of, like, muggy picture. And my modeling agency at the time said, oh, Ross is a boring name. We're going to call you Keelan. I went, all right, yeah, fine, whatever. Sorry.
Jamie Lang
They said they were going to call you Keelan.
Ross / Rylan
Keelan was my name. K E E L A N. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I did this job. All day, everyone's calling me Keelan. And at the end of the day, back then, that's how old we are. They paid you by check. But the check wasn't a written check. It was a printed check from, like, a company. And it was made out to Mr. K Clark. And I was so embarrassed to go up to this woman who'd handed me this check and say, I'm really sorry, can you change this check? Because my name's not Keelan, it's Ross. I never ended up cashing the check. Shut up. Yeah, because I was that embarrassed. And back then it was like, 200 quid. A lot of money. Yeah, it is now. And the next day I was back at river island on my lunch break. Opposite was whmf. I went in, picked up a baby book, went straight to ARCs. I thought it was going to have to be the same initial as my name if I get paid by check again. And I saw Rylan and I went, oh, that sounds like Keelan. Shut the book and then get out of here.
Jamie Lang
There's no ways.
Ross / Rylan
True.
Jamie Lang
You literally open the book. That's it.
Ross / Rylan
That's why I think it was like, 1001 baby names. Yeah.
Jamie Lang
Have you. Have you always been this kind of charismatic, kind of larger than life character?
Ross / Rylan
I mean, I've always been the same person, but there's definitely, like, two of me. Like, I'm. I think I'm pretty boring.
Jamie Lang
Really?
Ross / Rylan
Yeah. I think I'm a bit of a boy.
Jamie Lang
You're not a bit of a boy.
Ross / Rylan
I am. Like, our agent is over there nodding his head. I'm. I'm not this, like, party boy that everyone thinks I am.
Jamie Lang
Yeah, but anything. You're a party boy. But, like, I. I would say this. Like, I definitely. There are, there are. There are so many sides to everybody. Right? Like, people would say, there's one side with your family, there's one side with your friends, there's one side. You're at work and there's one side. Maybe you're in your relationship. And you definitely sort of, you know, Ben Four Faces. Yeah, exactly. But also in this, like, life of, like, presenting in tv, you kind of have to have.
Men's Wearhouse Announcer
Yeah.
Ross / Rylan
Like, Riley is a bit of a character, really. Definitely. Yeah. But it's a lot of Ross, but, like Ross on crack. Yeah.
Jamie Lang
But as a kid, though, growing up.
Ross / Rylan
Oh, I was that, like, ginger kid that was like, feisty little bastard. Yeah. I'd be the one at, like, family parties, like, getting up on the chair and doing a little routine Spice Girls, while my brother's sitting there going, I wish you like football.
Jamie Lang
So you're young, you're living in Essex and you. You go to this. You go to this. You get. You go to this school, which is probably one of the best schools at the time.
Ross / Rylan
It was the top school in the country.
Jamie Lang
This top school.
Ross / Rylan
I was like this really bright kid. Were you? Yeah.
Jamie Lang
Did you know what you wanted to do?
Ross / Rylan
I. I always wanted to be a pop star and then I. I knew I was going to be famous, but I didn't know what for. Get out of here. Yeah, no, I know. Like in. Even in my yearbooks, I remember in the yearbook for boys, it was. I won Most Likely to Be Famous. And in the yearbook for the girls, I was in that one as well, obviously, and I can't remember what it was. I think it was most likely to end up on TV or something like that.
Jamie Lang
Do you know what's so funny? I. For some reason, because we're same age, like, fame was like the most, like,
Ross / Rylan
exciting thing because of the era we grew up in. So when we were at secondary school, which was like 2000 to 2005, that era is when things like reality TV really kicked off. So things like Big Brother, I'm a Celebrity, even things like that. And it just showed you, especially Big Brother, that anyone could become a superstar. You know, we'd grown up previous to that with people like film stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Hanks. Yeah, like celebrities. We didn't have social media, we didn't have none of that. And then the Spice Girls come along and they were British girls that had taken over the world. And you're like, wow, like they're celebrities. Then all of a sudden you've got like, the likes of Jade Goody and people like that, this reality star that come through, and all of a sudden you look at as an absolute celebrity. They are in your head at that age on the same level as someone like the Spice Girls or Tom Hanks, because they are everywhere. They're earning so much money. They're celebrities. And there was this thing in my head, like I was always obsessed with Big and that whole concept of a world within a world, like this artificial bubble that's been created. Like, I used to love the Truman show, the film, like all of that. And it's all these, like little drip feeds at our age that started making me go, well, I could do that. And I remember it was year, so it would have been big brother four, so 2003, so it would have been year nine. Year nine. We went on a school trip to the Isle of Wight and at that point, Big Brother 4 had just started and I printed the Big Brother 4. I off in the IT lab and stuck it on my suitcase. And I remember getting on the train to go to school. Such a weird thing to stick. I am weird. But it was almost like I was like crafting my future.
Jamie Lang
Yeah, yeah.
Ross / Rylan
So, like physically doing it and obviously I did ended up going in Big Brother, got those suitcases and won.
Jamie Lang
I'm going to get into that. But it's just this fascination with fame. I'm so. I'm so glad. I don't know why it was our age. Like, I remember seeing Britney Spears on TV and just being obsessed with, like.
Ross / Rylan
Maybe for different reasons.
Jamie Lang
For different reasons, but I was obsessed. And I also, like, I used to go to bed at night and it wasn't.
Ross / Rylan
Where you going with this? Yeah, yeah.
Jamie Lang
Thinking of Britney Spears. No, But I used to go to bed at night and I remember I used to like dream about like being on stage and performing and so many of the guys that I knew were thinking the same. We had this obsession with being famous, but there is. Because it was like untouchable.
Ross / Rylan
Yeah. There's a group now, though. There is a group of us and we're all a very similar age that are doing not the same things, but we're all in it in some respect. And whether people. I'm just very honest, but whether people want to admit that it's thinking back to those times, that childhood that we had, and then teenage years, which are the years that shape you.
Jamie Lang
Yeah, yeah.
Ross / Rylan
Don't get me wrong, people later on in life, they could be in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, might have a massive career change or change the path of their life because of circumstance. But there is a lot of us in the industry that we both work in now that are of a very similar age, that are all doing. The best way to describe it is an event, let's say there's an event that everyone wants to go to there is a group of our age, people that are standing there all together. And it's because we all grew up in that era of I could do that. Like all that this is showing me is that that could be me. And that's when you had these new avenues to be who you wanted to be. You know, you found fame on a reality show. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I found fame on a reality show.
Jamie Lang
Yeah. But I was, I was, I at the beginning of it was I didn't want people to think that was doing it because I wanted to be famous.
Ross / Rylan
You didn't want. Yeah, because I didn't want that.
Jamie Lang
Yeah. But I did think it, right? Yeah, of course. It's a reality about being posh. Because I thought it'd be fun to be famous.
Ross / Rylan
Exactly.
Jamie Lang
But I try to make every excuse under the sun to it. No, it was because this and because of that. And I thought, of course, yeah, because
Ross / Rylan
you know, you see someone on tv, it's like, I just want to be famous. You think? Prick.
Jake Stauch
Yeah.
Jamie Lang
But you, you were never, you never tried, I don't think you ever tried to make an excuse.
Ross / Rylan
No, I was like, I know what I want to do and I'm gonna do it.
Jamie Lang
And yeah, you always were just like, no, that's what I want to be famous.
Ross / Rylan
I was like, I want to be famous. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's very different story now. But when I was on X Factor, I had a job. X Factor was a job to me. 100 and I knew, am I the best singer in the world? No. Can I do as good as other people on here? Yeah, I can. And when the process started happening and I started going through and I saw the way they were treating me different to this guy here and that girl there, I was like, okay. And it's. I just started playing the game early. And you realize in. Especially in reality tv, as much as people don't like to go on about stereotypes, there is a box for absolutely everyone. If I'm the producer or I'm the execra, I'm the head of the channel, I've got a chart. It's a little bit like when you see on these reality shows the pictures and the Polaroid, that's what it is. And you want the gay one, you want the joke, you want the good looking guy, you want the sweet innocent girl, you want that. It's actually that. Yeah, you're completely right. And I knew, well, I'm not the good looking guy. I'm not.
Jamie Lang
Come on.
Ross / Rylan
The boy Band boy, come on. No, I knew what I was. I knew what my box.
Jamie Lang
I think you were fitting quite a lot of those boxers.
Ross / Rylan
I think. Good luck if you're lucky. But. But yeah, I knew what my job was and I thought I can either stand here and sing and last two or three weeks of the live shows or I give. Give the machine exactly what it needs to be fed and hopefully last a little bit longer. And eight weeks later, right there, I was.
Jamie Lang
Yeah, but that's amazing that you realize that.
Ross / Rylan
Yeah.
Jamie Lang
When I did Main Chelsea, I did not realize how much of a game it was.
Ross / Rylan
I was the joke, but I knew I was the joke, so I was in on it. That's the difference. Whereas looking for me, you know, not mentioning any names, but especially on X Factor, there are people that get that far or actually not as far as me. I was the one that. But there were people that got to those live shows that we'd all perceive as the public as the joke act, but they didn't believe they were the joke act. They thought they were the next Lady Gaga or they thought they were the next Madonna, when in fact, from day one, I was like, I'm not the next Lady Gaga. I know I'm the joke. Well, let's, let's play the game.
Jamie Lang
Where does that self awareness come from?
Ross / Rylan
Because that's the era we grew up in. The era we grew up in. I just got there earlier.
Jamie Lang
Yeah, but that self awareness, realizing that because it's every bit of your emotion wants to. Typically as humans, we'll just go, I'm not the joke act. This is. I'm good. I'm great. I'm this and that. But you kind of lent into it and we're like, no, this is what it's going to be.
Ross / Rylan
Because I knew I wasn't as good as Dave. Three. Three people along, I knew I wasn't as good as that. You know, I was on there with like James Arthur. I was on there with Ella Henderson. I was there with Lucy Spraggan, Union J. I mean, all of these people that were incredibly talented singers, I knew I wasn't as good technically a singer as them. I knew I was better than what I was doing on a Saturday night on X Factor. And so did all of they. So when you watch X Factor back and week one, obviously I'm in the bottom two and get saved. Week two, when I got saved by the public for the first time on them live shows, just look at every single other contestant's reaction because they were more happier for me than I was. Because they were, like, fucking brilliant. Like, because they knew they were all in with me. They knew I could sing. I shared a bed with James for, like, six weeks.
Jamie Lang
Did you really?
Ross / Rylan
Yeah. And we used to sing in bed, like, pretty much every night. Like, he made up this song about me, Rylander. And we all. Even now, whenever we speak, he's like, rylander. And I'm like, ryland. Like, it's just like piss take.
Jamie Lang
And it's like you and James are the shared events.
Ross / Rylan
Yeah, we were like bromance central. I love that man. You know, he's like a brother to me. And so is J. Like, we were the Sherzy boys. We always will be.
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Ross / Rylan
FDIC subject to credit approval.
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Men's Wearhouse Announcer
Okay, caller one wins courtside seats to tonight's game. What? I won floor seats. You did? I've been calling for 13 months. Wait. Chris.
Jake Stauch
Yes.
Men's Wearhouse Announcer
I finally did it. What are you gonna wear? Men's Wearhouse. They've got today's looks for any occasion and I need to look like a celebrity. Don't want to stick out.
Jamie Lang
Except.
Men's Wearhouse Announcer
Exactly. They've got Chill Flex by Kenneth Cole, Joseph Abboud and a tailor at every store for the perfect fit.
Ross / Rylan
Congrats.
Men's Wearhouse Announcer
You can stop calling now. Not a chance. Hit any look for every occasion at Men's Wearhouse. Love the way you look.
Episode: Rylan Clark: I Played the Fame Game on The X Factor | GREAT MOMENTS
Date: June 7, 2026
Host: Jamie Laing
Guest: Rylan Clark
In this episode of Great Company, Jamie Laing sits down with Rylan Clark for an energetic, candid conversation about fame, self-awareness, and playing the “fame game” in the volatile world of reality TV. Rylan opens up about the origins of his stage name, his journey from a self-described “feisty little bastard” in Essex to household name, and the power (and dangers) of knowing your “role” on screen. The two reflect on their parallel upbringings, the culture-shaping rise of reality TV, and what it really means to navigate life in the public eye.
For those who haven’t listened:
This episode is a fast-paced, vulnerable, and funny masterclass on the mechanics of modern fame—delivered by two celebrities who have played the game and, crucially, were aware they were playing. Rylan’s candor, wit, and humility offer both entertainment and wisdom for anyone interested in resilience, reinvention, or the backstage realities of TV stardom.