Shock value: Wagner Carrilho performing on The X Factor Live has surprised many be evading the chop thus far
This time last year, when he was turned down for a singing slot at the Pensnett Social Welfare Centre, Wagner Lima Fiuza-Carrilho could have had no idea just how dramatically his life was about to change.
Members of the club, just yards from the X Factor contestant’s West Midlands bungalow, apparently rejected him on the grounds his inimitable style wouldn’t go down too well with the regulars.
But since then it’s become all too clear that the 54-year-old Brazilian’s dubious vocal skills are his greatest asset. In recent weeks, much to the despair of Simon Cowell and his fellow judges, Wagner’s become a household name — the anti-hero of The X Factor.
Voting for the bongo-playing former double-glazing salesman has somehow become a two-fingered salute proffered by cynical voters determined to protest against what they see as the manipulation of TV viewers.
But behind The X Factor shenanigans is a more poignant story, one which goes a long way towards explaining why Wagner is determined to go as far as he can in the most ruthless talent show in the world.
He has a three-year-old son, Cassius, whose financial future he is determined to secure.
The Brazilian singer is estranged from the child’s 36-year-old mother, and hasn’t seen the toddler for several months. But he remains determined to be a part of his life.
His close friend, vet Ian Fleming, told the Mail: ‘That boy is Wagner’s absolute reason for being out there and doing what he’s doing. The only reason he wants to make money is so he can buy him toys and give him the best life he can. There isn’t one conversation I’ve had with him where he hasn’t mentioned his little boy.’
Perhaps Wagner is desperate to be a better parent to his son than his own father was to him. He was abandoned as a child by his dad while growing up in Brazil and has never recovered from the rejection. Ironically, it was his father Paschoal Carrilho Machado’s success as a music impresario and jazz singer that took him away from home in Joao Pessoa in the north-east of the country.
He walked out on his wife Janine and two sons Wagner and his elder brother Verdi — both named after their father’s favourite composers — before Wagner’s tenth birthday. The two brothers moved with their beloved mother to a small apartment in the Santa Teresa suburb of Rio de Janeiro, just a stone’s throw from the then home of Ronnie Biggs, notorious for the Great Train Robbery.
Resilient: Brazilian Wagner at his wedding - unfortunately problems began to surface only weeks after marrying Trudi Brass
Wagner, whose paternal grandfather — also named Paschoal — was a wealthy government senator in the state of Paraiba, attended the Rio State University as he knew he had only himself to depend on for financial security.
He devoted himself to studying for a degree in physical education and practising karate and the Afro-Brazilian foot dancing known as capoeira — as well as honing the muscular, tanned body which brought him part-time work as a model
This was the ‘Brazilian god’ that Trudi Brass, later to become Wagner’s first wife, met in Rio in 1977. She was then a 22-year-old English graduate from Warwick University and had moved to Brazil to start work as a governess.
Wagner was 21 and, she says, a vastly different man to the wild-haired portly singer currently gracing our screens. She recalls how, when he walked along Ipanema Beach dressed only in shorts, his lean body would draw glances from admiring women and envious men.
‘He was absolutely gorgeous,’ she says of the man who to this day mispronounces her name as ‘Troo-jee’.
‘I still find it hard to believe that the strange-looking man on the television is the same man I first met on the beach all those years ago.’
Extrovert: Wagner Carrilho pictured in Brazil with his pet lion, Jungle always had a wild side
She met him through mutual friends at one of the dozens of bars that line Rio’s beaches.
‘Wagner was typically Brazilian, gorgeous, good at swimming and surfing,’ she says.
‘He was charming. He used to drive around in an old VW Beetle convertible. He was very into karate and evangelical about keeping fit. He really used to turn heads.’
But even back then, Wagner displayed the eccentricity that has thrust him into the limelight. In one photograph from those days, he can be seen on the beach holding the tail of a pet lion called Jungle which, according to Trudi, belonged to a wealthy girlfriend. At that point, Trudi and Wagner were just close friends, as she was in a relationship with a long-term boyfriend.
‘Wagner told me he was in love with me,’ she says.
‘He used to call me “Blue Eyes”. He was terribly romantic, but I made it clear from the start that I was only interested in his friendship.’
The pair remained close, and Trudi’s happiest memories are of the parties they went to together, the poems Wagner wrote her and the love songs he sang.
He took her to eat feijoada, the Brazilian national dish of stewed beans and pork, at the flat in the neighbourhood of Sepetiba where he lived with his mother.
‘She was a very quiet, but lovely, sweet lady,’ says Trudi.
‘Wagner was devoted to her.’
Then there was the New Year’s Eve they spent together, lighting candles on Ipanema Beach, lying in the sand and watching the sun rise.
On another occasion, Wagner dived into the ocean to save Trudi when she was swept out to sea by the strong current. She says he told her: ‘Troo-jee. You have to marry me now. I saved your life.’ But it was another 15 years before she finally said yes.
‘I left Rio in 1978,’ says Trudi, who now works as a chiropractor and lives in Harborne, West Midlands.
‘Wagner was devastated. I think he’d hoped I would change my mind. He kept saying: “I’ll never see you again” ’
Point to prove: Wagner wants success on The X Factor - yet he craves to be a father to son Cassius even more
For a while, the pair kept in touch. But their correspondence dwindled when Trudi moved to Japan to teach. It was years later, during a five-week trip in 1992 to Brazil see friends, that Trudi decided to visit Wagner again.
‘I imagined he’d be married with lots of children, but he wasn’t. He was running a karate school and living in the same building. It was so nice to see him. He said: “You’ve come back to me” ’
This time Trudi, who was now single, fell for Wagner’s charms.
‘I was on holiday,’ she says.
‘I got wrapped up in it all. We become lovers and spent the weekend together. He took me to see his mother, who was overjoyed to see me. She said: “He always loved you.”
‘Wagner said he wanted to come to England to be with me. I had an open mind about it all. I thought he should come over and see how it went.’
He arrived in April 1992 after selling his karate school and his car and travelling from Brazil on a tourist visa.
‘At first, it was great fun,’ says Trudi. ‘People found him charming.
‘He was funny, effervescent, happy and artistic. I remember he painted parrots on to pots and sold them. He didn’t want to be a financial burden on me and he wanted to send money back to Brazil for his mother.’
Wagner swapped the delights of Rio de Janeiro.......
......to entering singing contests in the more quiet setting of Pensnett in the West Midlands
As a tourist, however, Wagner was not allowed to work. The only solution, says Trudi, was for the pair to marry. Three months after he arrived from Brazil, they tied the knot at Birmingham Register Office.
But Trudi swiftly realised she’d made a mistake.
‘After we married, Wagner became very possessive,’ she says.
‘I was just overwhelmed by the feeling we’d made a mistake. Being in love was all about him, but I never felt loved. But I felt bad about it because he’d given everything up to come to be with me. He wanted to have a child. Not surprisingly, he was very angry when I told him six weeks after the wedding I wanted out of the relationship. He took it very badly.’
So badly, in fact, that Trudi was forced to have an injunction served on him.
‘I found somewhere for him to stay,’ she says.
‘But he kept coming to the house. He was verbally abusive and I was frightened. On one occasion I had to call the police. He kept telling them: “This is my wife.” It was a terrible time. He was distraught and wouldn’t accept that it was over. I was frightened and I felt so guilty.’
Trudi paid for Wagner’s flight back to Brazil and gave him £800 in cash to help him on his way. But within months he had returned, funding his passage on a merchant ship by working in the galley.
Trudi says: ‘He wanted to make himself a life here. I helped him find somewhere to stay again.’
But life dealt Wagner another blow in 1994 when his mother became ill with breast cancer. He returned to Brazil until she died. Then tragedy struck again when Wagner’s brother Verdi died from a pulmonary embolism.
Controversial: Wagner's performances have not won over three of the X Factor judges - but he remains a threat in the competition
Trudi and Wagner divorced in 1996, but he was soon back on his feet, first finding work in a call centre and then as a salesman for Conservatories Xpress.
He also studied for a postgraduate certificate in education so he could find work as a teacher.
He began teaching karate at The Village Hotel in Dudley. Once he’d earned enough money, he opened the Martial Arts and Dance Gym in nearby Cradley Heath, supplementing his income by working as a supply teacher of PE and religious education at various schools.
‘He kept phoning me to tell me how well he was doing,’ says Trudi.
‘He was driving around in a Porsche.’
A second marriage in 1997, to Carole Davies, a 48-year-old youth officer, lasted around seven years before the couple separated amicably. Wagner, who was eight years younger than his wife, told friends the menopause had changed her.
By then he was approaching 50 and his dream of becoming a father was unrealised.
That changed when he met hairdresser Jenny Brown, who was 18 years younger than him, in a cafe and wooed her with the immortal line: ‘I want you to be the mother of my child.’
Shock: Wagner's consistent evasion of the dreaded bottom two in The X Factor have left even mentor Louis surprised
Cassius Iesus was born on December 28, 2006, by which time Wagner was teaching PE at Leasowes Community College, Halesowen. It seemed the stable life of which he had dreamed had become a reality.
But a shoulder injury forced Wagner to stop teaching altogether. Within a year of the birth, the relationship had collapsed.
Trudi recalls his devastation: ‘He said she didn’t want anything to do with him and was living with someone new.
‘He’d been trying to get custody of his son and was desperate to see him.’
She says Wagner’s sitting room was filled with toys and clothes he had bought for the son he was unable to see: ‘It was heartbreaking.’
Winning The X Factor pales into insignificance beside such considerations. What Wagner really wants, say his friends, is to be a father to his son.
‘As a boy, his greatest sadness was that his father wasn’t there,’ says one.
‘As a man, his greatest sadness is his son isn’t there to see him.’
Source:Dailymail
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