Kit Lovelace
I was 13 when Billie’s Because We Want To came out and, though I had being trying hard to carve out a niche for myself as the serious indie kid of my class, such was my crush on Billie that I couldn’t stop myself from signing up to her fan club. Three times.
The first time I signed up, I lied on the form. I had heard that Billie was 15 and, reasoning that a 15 year old popstar wouldn’t be interested in a 13 year old schoolboy, I claimed to be 15 too.
All would have been fine had I not decided to discuss my falsified application with my younger sister who then told me that she was fairly certain Billie was 13, not 15. My heart sank. Now instead of looking like a potential boyfriend, I looked like some sort of creepy pervert lusting after a girl barely in her teens.
There was nothing else for it; I had to reapply. This time I filled the form out and stated my truthful age (adding in the ‘Other Comments’ box that I had made a mistake with my initial application and that I was definitely, definitely 13 years old - secretly hoping that this would get Billie thinking about our future together).
A few days later, Billie’s video was on TV and a little trivia pop-up box confirmed that I had been correct all along. Billie was 15. Before I had a chance to thrash my sister to a living pulp, I ran to the computer and loaded up the Billie website. Figuring it was probably better to be a spectacle-wearing 15 year old than a 13 year old with 20:20 vision, I completed my third application with a massive, apologetic essay on how I came to apply three times and tried to blame the whole thing on not having worn my glasses whilst filling the form out.
Whether it was a technical fault with the mailer system or (more likely) someone on Billie’s management team deciding to blacklist me, I guess will always remain a mystery. All I know is that I never received a single update from the fan club.
