Union J - The Story. Tina Campanella
he could. He told the Racing Post in 2006: ‘The worst thing is when I don’t live up to my expectations.’
Sir Michael Stoute described him as being a very promising young rider. ‘He’s getting plenty of exposure on the racetrack now and he’s developed a nice position in the saddle,’ he said. ‘He needs to work on his strength, but he’s got talent and is certainly on an upward curve. I can see the progress he’s making and he’s the kind of rider who could end up doing well for himself.’
It sounds just like the kind of thing that Gary or Louis might say on the X Factor panel, so JJ obviously had a lot of experience in being judged and taking both praise and criticism.
While racing for Sir Michael, he was given the chance to ride one of the horses owned by Her Majesty the Queen. The Queen owns several horses and many of them take part in races around the country, ridden by jockeys like JJ. About two or three times a year, Her Majesty would call in at the stables to check on her animals.
Jamie said it was a daunting experience, meeting the ruler of the country. He told the Daily Express: ‘Once or twice a year, she would pop into the yard to check on her horses – it was so weird, seeing her.
‘She sauntered in, wearing Wellington boots as if it was normal – and she walked into the horses’ box that I was in at that time. She said ‘hello’, fed the horses some grass and left. Apart from The X Factor, it was the most surreal moment of my life.’
As his career progressed, though he found it harder and harder to keep his weight down. If a rider is too heavy it makes it more difficult for the horses to go fast. Although Jamie wasn’t overweight, he was heavier than most jockeys, many of whom are tiny compared to most people. The ones who are successful often weigh below 8 stone (51 kilos). In 2006 he weighed 7st 12lb – about two or three stone lighter than most boys in their late teens. Although his mum fed him a special diet designed to keep his weight low but his energy up, it became difficult to prevent him from becoming too heavy to make sure his horses kept on winning races.
In October 2009, he took part in his last competitive horse race. It might have been difficult for the young boy to see a different future after he was no longer able to pursue his career as a jockey, especially as this exciting job had been the sole focus of his life up until that point.
When asked in 2006 what he did in his spare time, Jamie just laughed and shrugged off the question. He didn’t have time to relax – it was all about the horses.
He continued to be involved with horses by helping out at a stables run by another trainer called John Gosden. Until the day he entered the X Factor competition, he helped train the horses by taking them out on practice runs every morning. The riding has kept him very fit, as so many girls around the country now appreciate.
With looks that most men would die for, it was inevitable that with a body honed by such hard work and the kind of chiselled features that are made for the camera, he would try modelling and acting. But, according to his family, he has sung at home all his life. They used to hear him sing along to the radio the whole time and often thought he had more than just the ability to carry a tune. After he started carving a career in the entertainment industry, he came across the other two ‘J’s’, Jaymi and Josh, and leapt headlong as fast as one of the horses he used to ride towards the chance to form Triple J.
JAYMI HENSLEY
QUICK FACTS
DATE OF BIRTH: 23/2/90
BORN: Luton, Bedfordshire
PARENTS: Jackie and David Hensley
SIBLINGS: Aaron, 17
GREW UP: Luton
SCHOOLS: Putteridge High School
As a dance teacher and choreographer for her local theatre group, Jaymi’s mum Jackie had always hoped her oldest son would take up a career in the performing arts. From an early age Jaymi often joined his mum on stage with the Phoenix Players, Luton’s amateur dramatics group.
The first time he took to the stage with adults was in 2001, aged 11, when he took on one of the lead roles in the production of Blitz! – a musical by Lionel Bart, writer of the hit musical Oliver! In the same year he began attending Luton’s Putteridge High School, but despite homework and studying, he continued appearing in productions with the Phoenix Players.
At 14, he decided to do something incredibly brave for someone so young. He had been torn by feelings for others around him that many other people of the same age did not share. Taking them to one side one day, he gathered his family and other people close to him around him and summoned up all his courage.
‘I’m gay,’ he told them. It wasn’t as if those who knew him best hadn’t guessed, but sometimes people can react badly when so many people still find it hard to understand how anyone can be attracted to someone of the same sex. Jaymi had been worried those close to him wouldn’t understand. Fortunately his family took the news really well. This allowed him to move on and concentrate on what really mattered to him – his singing career.
He later told Heat magazine: ‘It is not a big thing for me – I came out when I was 14 to my family and friends and never had one piece of negativity.’
After leaving school at 16, he put his heart and soul into his plan to work in the entertainment industry and tried out for a new band called Code 5. Not only did he win a place, but the band were quickly snapped up as an exciting new boyband and were given the chance to support Irish act Westlife on one of their last series of arena gigs, called ‘The Love Tour’.
As the youngest member of the five-piece act, Jaymi had only been with the four other band members for two months when he travelled up and down the country, playing some of Britain’s biggest venues including Brighton, Wembley, Newcastle, Dublin and Belfast.
His bandmates included ‘Ash’, cousin of Antony Costa from the boyband Blue, and ‘Jossy’, who had both had previous stabs at boyband fame. Code 5 were brought together as a manufactured vocal harmony boyband to sing a mix of material written specially for them, as well as versions of songs by other artists, some as diverse as Lionel Ritchie.
Louis Walsh, Westlife’s manager, was said to have personally chosen Code 5 as one of the support bands for the tour, but who knows if he remembered Jaymi when he performed in front of him at the auditions, five years later?
After the Westlife tour, the band continued touring before featuring in a BBC3 programme fronted by top rock record producer Tommy D, called Singing with the Enemy. The programme saw Code 5 having to work alongside their musical opposite, anarchic performance artists called K-Tron and The Exploding Triangles. They all had to put aside their differences and work together. The bands had just one week to dream up and record a brand new track and then perform a surprise gig in front of their die-hard fans.
Viewers watched as they struggled to live together in an intense pressure cooker of creativity and reconcile their musical differences. Despite all the attention, Code 5 didn’t achieve the success they had hoped for, which left Jaymi looking for a new challenge.
After a spell at a holiday camp on the entertainment team, he returned to Luton, where the talented vocalist was able to make ends meet by teaching singing and dancing – just like his mum. At every opportunity, he did what he could to return to the stage and perform in front of a wider audience, though.
In 2010, he performed at the Maspalomas Gay Pride festival in Gran Canaria, Spain, in front of an audience of thousands. Before that he had been working as a singer, touring the clubs and bars of Britain and the resorts like those found on the beaches of Spain.
Also in 2010, he entered a competition to find singers called the Open Mic Competition. After sailing through the regional heats, he made it to the final at London’s indigO2, where he sang a slowed-down version of Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’. It was a close-run competition and he narrowly missed out on winning by being beaten by another competitor.