Star Idol

Star Idol (Chinese: 明星偶像) was a Singaporean televised acting competition held in 2005 and aired on MediaCorp TV Channel 8. The competition was first announced through the Internet on 11 August 2005, and elimination rounds commenced on November 2 of the same year. The programme aired weekly on Wednesdays at 8:00pm and ended with a two-hour grand final on March 19, 2006.

When the official announcement for Star Idol was made via Internet, an article posted asked for suggestions of the mascot. It was later decided that a large red gorilla that resembled King Kong would become the official mascot for Star Idol.

To be eligible for Star Idol, contestants must be either a Singaporean citizen or permanent resident and belong to the age range of 16 and 35. There was no specification for race, although fluency in the Chinese language is required due to the competition being Chinese-based. Auditions were held on September 3, 2005. Participants had to memorize dialogues from five scripts given, one of which would be randomly chosen by the panel of judges to be performed during the actual audition. Registration for the competition required a fee of S$10, which was paid on the day of the audition itself. An estimated total of 2,000 people auditioned for Star Idol.

Roughly 500 people from the auditions made the cut and became part of the callbacks. The number of contestants was filtered down by a series of eliminations until only 10 male and female semi-finalists remained to compete in the quarter finals.

The quarter-finals saw the pairing up of one male and one female contestant. An ever-changing panel of judges would comment after an acting performance by each pair. However, the fates of the contestants were decided by public voting. Each week, one male and one female contestant is eliminated until 4 of each remain. The final 8 would proceed to the Semi-finals of the competition.

Top 10 Female Quarter-finalists

Top 10 Male Quarter-finalists

Alicia Neo, Jacqueline Sue, Leann Koh, Lilian Lai, Bryan Wang, Kang Cheng Xi, Lincoln Khoo and Leo Lam became the eight Semi-finalists of Star Idol and had to compete in an interactive television drama titled Who Is It?. Episodes of Who Is It? were pre-recorded and aired every Wednesday at 8:00pm. The only shows recorded live were through the results shows at 10:30pm, with the exception of the episode on February 22, 2006. It was pre-recorded and aired at 11:30pm due to the airing of the eulogy of former Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Sinnathamby Rajaratnam at 10:30pm, who died earlier that day.

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