Which is more daunting: 100 million people watching you on TV? Sharon Osbourne attempting to flirt? Or trotting on horseback down Brighton’s New Road dressed in a cowboy hat singing arias?

For Marcus Collins, one third of vocal group The Texas Tenors, it was Osbourne asking for his number when they appeared on reality TV show America’s Got Talent in 2009 while Osbourne’s husband Ozzy Osbourne watched on from backstage looking grumpy.

“You know he’s called the Prince Of Darkness, right?” Marcus jokes from LA, where he is holed up in a hotel the night before flying to the UK. “I was frightened for my life!”

Piers Morgan was also difficult to deal with. He said whatever came out of the childhood friends’ mouths, whether it was to sing or talk, was always unbearably cheesy.

But the boys had the last laugh. Morgan admitted he’d found himself humming one of their tunes while on a beach in Malibu on holiday and that it was testament to their voices it had got inside his head.

The three classically-trained singers first met when they lived in Texas, but moved away for different careers.

Marcus, who has most recently appeared opposite Bruce Willis in Perfect Stranger and guested on One Life To Live and Law & Order, was in Hollywood trying to get his acting career off the ground.

Romantic tenor JC, who met his wife, Jennifer, who was Miss Kansas 1998, while singing at the Miss Kansas pageant, had had spells living in Lucca, Italy, channelling his heroes, while John Hagen had been indulging his other love, art, and running the Henry W Myrtle Fine Art Gallery in Cedar Falls, Iowa. JC called Marcus and John to propose a reunion and form a band to get on the variety show. Soon the three were practicing on cruise ships.

“We decided to demo our two rehearsed routines on cruise ships but they went down so well they kept asking us to record something,” Marcus says. “Before we had even recorded anything we had pre-orders from the fans on the ships.

“We got back and put a mix of our favourite songs together: Nessun Dorma, La Donna E Mobile, classic country songs, songs from musicals, gospel, classical.”

With the band going further and further in the competition, steady CD sales to viewers helped them pay their way, because prize money is only awarded at the end.

Their popularity is such they are the first AGT group to be able to tour Europe, and a second album, featuring their own compositions, is on the way soon.

Marcus puts it down to fact they truly believe what they sing. He says people can see the passion they have for doing what they love, even if that good ol’ cowboy charm means they’ll be arriving at the Theatre Royal Brighton on horseback.

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