Jedward: 'Our fans track us down wherever we go!'

Jedward: 'Our fans track us down wherever we go!'
Jedward: 'Our fans track us down wherever we go!'

Edward Grimes tells us about his new CBBC show Jedward’s Big Adventure (weekdays) and why he’d like to live in a hot air balloon! Since X Factor, you’ve had a platinum album, your own reality show, represented Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest and starred in Celebrity Big Brother. So tell us about your new kids show? “We’re really excited because it’s totally crazy! We went all over the UK learning how to become tour guides. We had 24 hours to learn about a World Heritage site and then take a group of tourists on a tour there. John and I were competing against each other with a celebrity guest to help us both.” So how is the winner decided? “After our tour, the tourists are quizzed and the group that gets the most answers right means that tour guide has won. But the loser gets a messy forfeit. In Edinburgh, I got to throw a bucket of fake pooh all over John, and on the Jurassic Coast we blew up a quarry and John got covered in beans and flour!” Which celebrity guests join you on the show? “In the first episode at the Tower of London we had Joe Swash and Brian Dowling. I got dressed up as Anne Boleyn while Joe tried to behead me and we all had a massive water fight! We had great guests like Blue Peter presenters and the girl band Parade.” Why do you think children will enjoy the show? “They’ll learn loads of facts, but it’s not like one of those boring TV shows that’s filmed in a studio. We were on top of mountains in the wind and rain so we had to keep topping up our hairspray!” Have you bought your own house yet? “No because then everyone would know where we live and it would be crazy. When we stay in hotels our fans are always outside and when we filmed the series, we’d be in the middle of nowhere and they still tracked us down. We could live in a hot air balloon. That would be kind of cool.” So what do you spend your money on? “We buy loads of famous memorabilia. We have Michael Jackson’s autograph like, 24 times, and loads of Britney Spears stuff, including a costume she wore on tour.” You’ve done so much over the last three years, what’s been the highlight? “Meeting Barack Obama - that was pretty cool - and going on stage with Britney Spears.”

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.