I’ve interviewed a fair few X Factor contestants over the years. It’s always on the Monday after their elimination and they’re always quite bullish about their post-X Factor singing careers.

Kandy Rain, who were formed well in advance of this year’s X Factor, are in frighteningly good form. All four of the girls are bellowing down the line at me excitedly. These girls are a force of nature – laughing and talking over the top of each other. And they’ve got that weird synergy that when one girl stops talking, another will pick up from where they left off and continue. And spookily, all four frequently say exactly the same thing at the same time.

And that’s where we pick up our interview, with the Kandy Rain girls excitedly screaming hello down the phone lines…

Hello!!! We were sorry to hear that you girls got eliminated on Sunday night’s X Factor. We’d hoped that you’ve get a little father than this in the competition. Did you feel it was unfair that you got eliminated in the first week?

If we’re going based on our performance, then we don’t really feel it was fair. We went out there and gave everything on Saturday night and we felt we put in a really good performance, but due to the press and everything – we’ve had a lot of bad press – so in that respect, it wasn’t much of a shock.

We were talking about this last week, and it seems that the likelihood of a group getting eliminated in the first week is actually quite high.

I don’t think that’s fair to say. I know we were the first to leave, but the reason we went I feel was based on the press. In terms of the groups, I actually felt that on Saturday night, Louis Walsh had the strongest category.

Cheryl and Dannii both commented about your costumes. As Simon said, both of them have worn risque costumes on stage in the past, so how do you respond to that?

Well, we obviously didn’t agree, but we respect everything Cheryl and Dannii had to say. The thing with Kandy Rain, when we got out and perform, we want to enjoy ourselves and so we dress up and wear costumes. The outfits we wear onstage aren’t necessarily the kind of thing we’d wear walking down the street in the daytime. In terms of the outfits, we love our outfits!

Unfortunately, you guys didn’t get a chance to see us and understand what Kandy Rain is all about – we’re just four girls, one dream and all we wanna do is just go out there and just dress up. I think we’re all about having fun and enjoying ourselves and that’s what we did on Saturday.

Who chose the song, by the way, and do you think it worked for you? Do you think it kind of played to your past jobs as strippers?

We chose it with our mentor, Louis. To be quite honest with you, I think the song had no relevance at all to our past. I thought the song was perfect for us, and the way we were dressed was quite relevant to the song. I don’t know if anyone remembers, but in Robert Palmer’s video for Addicted To Love, the backing singers were dressed quite similar to how we were dressed.

We just dress ourselves according to the song, whether it’s a ballad or it’s an uptempo, sexy, rocky song, we’ll dress ourselves accordingly.

How did you feel that the majority of comments were about your style rather than your performance?

Well, I just feel that we came on here to enter this competition as singers and the comments had nothing to do with our vocals – it was all focussed on our outfits. At the end of the day, it’s a talent competition, it isn’t Britain’s Next Top Model.

That said, the fact that they didn’t comment on our singing must’ve meant that we were so fantastic there was nothing negative to say! Dannii and Cheryl know this, outfits can be changed, but we would still wear those costumes again. We wouldn’t change our style for the world, because that is us. When we put on a show, we really put on a show – we want people to think “What are they going to do next week? What are they going to wear?”

It’s boring to play safe, don’t you agree Gerard? Like, why’d you wanna be safe, boy? You’ve gotta take risks!

Well, just so you know, I enjoyed the performances and the costumes…

[A roar of laughter erupts into the earpiece] I’ll bet you did!!!

At this point, all four members of Kandy Rain are laughing and hollering down the phone and it’s impossible to tell who is saying what. Worse still, the girls “creatively misinterpret” a comment I make, and mercilessly take the piss out of me. As they tease me about whether or not I’m blushing on the other side of the line, one of the girls asks me which Kandy Rain member was my favourite…

After a flurry of discussion, we decide it was Azi (the tall one) that I liked the best, but they think I’m referring to the blazer she was wearing.

“So you like blazers, huh?” she purrs. “Well, you can borrow it whenever you want, babe. We’ll send it in to you, you can get it fitted…”

I’m out of my depth here, and very much out of my league. I need to get these girls focussed on the interview here, so I say:

Hey, Kandy rein it in for a minute, will you?

[laughter] Good comeback Gerard!

We read that Louis has said to the press that Danyl Johnson was giving you guys a hard time during the rehearsals. Is this true?

We don’t really wanna talk about Danyl, you know? This is our time. We wish him luck though, he’s an amazing singer. Everyone’s got different personalities anyway, but we wish him luck.

There’s been a lot of hype about the other girl group in your category, Miss Frank…

They’re amazing, lovely girls. Louis was very good with everybody in his category, and all three of us were very different. We all had something to give.

Yeah, we were surprised by John and Edward at the weekend.

Really? We love them! You know what, they are very underrated those boys, and at the end of the day, John and Edward are little stars. Those boys have grown, and the people that are criticising them are in their late twenties/early thirties and they’re not young kids – and it’s young kids that love watching ‘em bounce about the stage.

There’s a place for John and Edward – I could see that on Nickelodeon, the Teen Awards. I mean, if you look at the likes of Britney and Justin Timberlake coming from the Mickey Mouse Club, that’s the same type of thing that John and Edward are like.

And can I just say a big thank you to those two boys, because they helped us pack last night. We were really upset and they cheered us up – they were really there for us, even though they’re young. They really did their parents proud.

You girls are no strangers to bad press these days – how do you respond to all that press attention that you got?

At the moment, we just don’t want to read the papers these days. We just don’t understand why people keep wanting to say the same things over and over. We’re bored of it. It’s not even the focus – we’re doing X Factor, it’s a talent competition, people should be focussing on our singing. I can understand running one story, but don’t keep going on and on about it.

You just have to admit it – after our performance on Saturday night, people just need to drop it now and actually just say Kandy Rain are good.

Let’s talk about Kandy Rain for a minute – how long were you guys together before you auditioned for X Factor?

Well, we were together for a year as a group, but Coco and Azi have known each other for three years and we met the other girls a year ago. We decided to form Kandy Rain and there was no going back, Kandy Rain forever!

What was the goal with Kandy Rain? What type of group did you want to be?

We wanted to be a modern day All Saints. You know what, the group you saw on stage on Saturday night – that’s what we had in mind. More than being like any other group, though, we just wanted to be ourselves. Luckily enough, all four of us have got great personalities that actually gel and fit quite well together.

What do you take from the Pussycat Dolls comparisons?

We love the Pussycat Dolls, but we’re absolutely nothing like them. I think we’re a lot rockier.

In the States, you’ve got the Pussycat Dolls, but over here in England there isn’t anybody like us, so the only thing they can compare us to is an act like Pussycat Dolls. But we’re not, we’re Kandy Rain.

What’s in the future for Kandy Rain?

What we’ve been doing from day one is working hard, and that’s what we’re going to keep doing. As we always say, you haven’t seen the last of Kandy Rain!

Who are you hoping will win the show now that you’ve gone?

STACEY!!!! She’s an amazing girl, she’s a beautiful girl, inside and out. We got to spend a lot of time with her because we shared a room and she’s such an amazing girl, she’s got such a good heart and she really deserves it. She deserves to win!

After the interview…

After interviewing Kandy Rain, I have a horrible feeling that the public have been mislead about these girls. The stripper stories in the papers may not have done the girls any favours in the competition – but they’re not the trashy types we might have been led to believe.

If anything, they’re a fantastically vibrant group of friends – who were still laughing hard at the end of a long day of interviews. Their war cry – “You haven’t seen the last of Kandy Rain” shows that the girls have a lot of self-belief about their future as a group. They’re not ashamed of their pasts – plenty of girls are stripping as a way of paying their way through college – the most famous of the group Coco Lloyd, was a law student before entering X Factor.

They’re not bitter about the endless tabloid reports about them, just bored of a story that’s been blown out of all proportion. However, it’s a shame that the public didn’t get a chance to know the real Kandy Rain, because I think they’d have rather liked them. We wish the girls the best of luck in the future and hopefully all the X Factor Xposure will lead to a real career in the music business for them!