FAR20.3: Linda!

I’ve never lived in a capital city before (although obviously I spend a lot of time in London), and one of the (many) things I love about it is that there’s always something going on. Even in a small city like Tórshavn, if there’s an event in the Faroes, it’s most likely going to be here. And living in the heart of downtown Tórshavn (that actually rhymes quite nicely if you pronounce Tórshavn right), as I currently am, there’s nearly always something going on very close to where I live. Today Linda came back to town.

The Faroese do remarkably well in other countries’ talent competitions – not having their own, they have to go abroad to take part. A couple of years ago, Jógvan from Klaksvík won X-Factor in Iceland; a kid from Tórshavn, Ragnar, came third on Talent 08, Denmark’s answer to Britain’s Got Talent, and this year, Linda Andrews from Tórshavn won the Danish X-Factor. Quite an achievement really. She’d also win an award for the Faroese person with the least Faroese name if there was one, but there’s not so she won’t (she’s actually Linda Andreasen).

Anyway, Linda is quite a star among the locals here – when I came back to the Faroes in April, I was playing football with a group of kids, and we were choosing team names. They made me the Faroe Islands, and another kid was going to be Denmark. I asked a little girl who she wanted to be and she said ‘Linda’. Fortunately I’d be keeping up with Faroese goings-on while I’d been away, and I knew who she was talking about.

So today Linda Andrews was performing at the SMS Shopping Centre, just down from where I live. And there was quite a big crowd:And I was very impressed! I’d seen a couple of performances on YouTube, and although I liked her version of ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’, I didn’t think all her performances were fantastic. They certainly weren’t bad by any means, but I was a little surprised at how popular she was in Denmark (obviously she’d be popular here). Until I saw her perform live today. Obviously she’d be getting more and more confident after so much performing anyway – today I thought she was excellent. She sang like a recording, if you know what I mean – every note spot on, and we’re not talking easy stuff. And what was also great was the total lack of ‘divaness’ – she was completely normal, laughing and joking with the crowd. What was quite funny was the number of guys who had clearly come to see Linda, but were pretending to be looking in the bookshop instead.

Well, we’ll see whether she cracks the British market (not that she’ll necessarily try) – just remember, you read about her here first! (Unless you’re from the Faroe Islands or Denmark).

If you’re interested, this is ‘our Linda’ singing ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ on X-Factor: