Group meetings weren’t a thing we usually did. Actually, we’d only had a group meeting one other time.
Almost exactly a month before, the four of us got together at Chocolateburg in Manhattan to hatch a plan to meet The Ruperts. Erin and I rode in together on the subway from Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn—a short ride across the river, but Apple and Isabel were already there by the time we showed up. The boys were having their Thanksgiving half-hour live spectacular in one month’s time, straight from NBC Studios in New York City, and none of us had been able snare tix. You can see why this meeting was an emergency.
Isabel giggled as she dipped her spoon into her drink, an order that consisted of runny chocolate, two scoops of blueberry ice cream, and caramel drizzling off of it. She lifted her spoon a few inches over her bowl and watched as the gloopy mess dripped back into it. “This is some Willy Wonka realness.”
It was weird seeing Isabel giggle. Hell, it was weird seeing Isabel in a normal, nonstalkery setting. The four of us were friends, but aside from Erin and I, who went to the same school in Brooklyn, none of us ever got together in the real world without the promise of the boys being close enough to stalk, and that only happened whenever the boys had a single to promote. When we did meet up in person, it was usually outside somewhere, standing in the freezing cold, huddled behind barricades for hours on end, armed with nothing but cell phones and CD cases, wielding Sharpies like weapons, and passing the time by discussing optimal ambush tactics. It was a lot like going to war. At least, that’s what I imagine going to war is like. Stalking boy bands was serious business.
Anyway, our friendship lived and breathed primarily in Twitter DMs and text messages. That might sound strange, but talk to any Ruperts fangirl and she’ll tell you just how important the Internet was in all of our lives. Without it we probably never would’ve even heard of The Ruperts.
The band was formed on the reality show So You Think the British Don’t Have Talent?, a weekly talent competition that aired in the UK, where the boys were from. They had each competed separately for the fifty-thousand-pound grand prize, but the producers decided to group them together into a boy band because the four boys were around the same age and all had the same first name. As the now famous story goes, SYTTBDHT’s host looked out into the audience one night, saw all the signs that featured the name “Rupert” on them, and said, “Seems the Ruperts are getting a lot of love tonight!”
The crowd went nuts, a million lightbulbs went on over the heads of music execs, and The Ruperts were born.
The group consisted of Rupert Lemon, the baritone who had auditioned with an opera/jazz fusion thing of his own making; Rupert Kirke, who came onstage with an acoustic guitar and got a standing ovation before his song was even over; Rupert Xavier, who explained in his intro reel that along with singing he was also interested in modeling and would be the first contestant in the history of the show who would showcase both of those talents at once; and Rupert Pierpont, the juggler.
I don’t mean juggling figuratively; I mean he came onstage with three bowling pins. Let us be clear on something: There were millions of talents that Rupert P. did not possess. One of those was singing. The only reason he was lumped together with the other three boys was because his unimaginative parents looked at him when he was born and bestowed upon him the most common name in England that year. Being named Rupert was the luckiest thing to have ever happened to him.
Their names may have been the same, but as they liked to reiterate in interviews, the Ruperts had their own distinct personalities.
Rupert P.’s likes and passions began and ended with juggling.
Rupert X. was the pretty boy/rebel.
Rupert L. couldn’t tell time.
And Rupert K. was … well, he was a life ruiner.