musicOMH.com, April 2008
Gig review - Henry's Cellar Bar, Edinburgh, 3 April 2008
"...a charming storyteller and an exquisite improviser."
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The Southern Reporter, 21 February 2008
"Bouncing back from diet of vitamins and alcohol"
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Edinburgh Evening News, 09 January 2008
"The harsh reality of tv fame"
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Rock 'n Reel magazine, November/December 2007:

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Sunday Mercury, 29 July 2007:

Pink Paper issue 928, 14 June 2007:

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Scotland on Sunday, 13 May 2007
Gig review - Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, 10 May 2008
"Shimmering, multi-textured love songs..."
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Edinburgh Evening News Guide Magazine, 23 March 2007

"Ainslie takes a second shot at fame"
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Indie Launchpad, March 2007
'Growing Flowers By Candlelight' review
"...thoroughly recommended."
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Clickmusic, November 2006
'Growing Flowers By Candlelight' review
"...a wonderful effort of soothing acoustic numbers to get you through those Sunday morning hangover blues."
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is this music? issue 24, Winter 2006:

Babble and Beat, October 2006
'Growing Flowers By Candlelight' review
"...fantastically well-written songs..."
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Rock Midgets.com, September 2006
'Growing Flowers By Candlelight' review
"...a pretty damn decent collection of astonishingly well-written largely acoustic numbers ...its quiet melodic charms are nigh on impossible to resist."
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Ainslie, as Jay in the film Mono, made the cover of FilmWaves magazine:

GIGWISE.com, September 2006
'Growing Flowers By Candlelight' review
"...offers companionship and respite to the weary human heart..."
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RoomThirteen.com. September 2006
'Growing Flowers By Candlelight' review
"...a charming collective of reflective and deeply personal songs that draw you into their world of easy flowing emotional warmth."
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rawkstar.net, August 2006
'Growing Flowers By Candlelight' review
"...genuine sentiment behind his music ...a haunting dynamic to his work."
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musicOMH.com, August 2006
'Growing Flowers By Candlelight' review
"...a delicately constructed aural coccoon, a sanctuary from the wild, rampaging world outside."
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Daily Record Saturday magazine, 12 August 2006:

The Skinny, 18 July 2006
Gig review - The Lot, Edinburgh 15th July 2006 (album launch)
"Enough passion and honesty to go to the moon and back."
Read...

Daily Record Saturday Magazine, 15 July 2006:
THE BIG INTERVIEW: GO FOURTH FROM ACADEMY
By Paul English

Fame show was a curse and a blessing for Ainslie Henderson The Scots singer struggled after being in the first Fame Academy but now his career is ready to finally take off

He was supposed to become a star - laden with attitude and brimming with confidence.

But, a matter of months after his Fame Academy telly debut, Ainslie Henderson represented little more than a wasted industry bi-product - the leftovers spat out by the Reality TV machine.

Coming fourth in the inaugural series of Fame Academy - the same one which spawned Paisley's David Sneddon and soul singer Lamarr - there was a certain sense of expectation about the "other" Scottish guy.

But within months Henderson felt so wasted that he couldn't muster the pride to stand up for himself when folk slung insults as they walked past him.

He says: "If someone called me a w****r walking down the street, I'd almost be ready to run round to them and say 'yeah, you're right'.

"That's a really unhealthy place to be. I didn't quite know where I was then or what to do. I really was a bit lost at that point."

Fast forward three years after the Edinburgh-born Borders-raised singer exited the Fame Academy, and he's writhing and jerking around the stage of King Tut's like a cross between Morrissey and Tim Booth, the lead singer of '90s indie legends James.

The confidence is remarkable. The stage presence mesmerising. And the music?

Surprisingly, it's very good.

Playing only his third gig since Fame Academy, Ainslie supported Unkle Bob, a Glasgow outfit stirring great expectations and whose debut album is out this week. But much of the post-gig buzz seemed to be about the wee guy in the specs with the red Y-fronts showing above his jeans.

Surely it's not the same Ainsley from Fame Academy?

Surely it is.

Relaxing with tea in his own hand-made clay mugs in his flat overlooking the park in Edinburgh's New Town, Ainslie has finally come to terms with Fame Academy and what it did to him.

The softly spoken 27-year-old says: "It was a curse and a blessing. I hate shows like Pop Idol, I still never watch them.

"But I had this naive idea that I could go in and stir things up and be myself and change things.

"I thought I was going to pioneer this honest anti-Pop Idol TV show.

"That came across to an extent. I carried a sense of shame around with me afterwards but people surprise me sometimes.

"Matt Bellamy, the guy from Muse, recognised me at a gig, and I spoke to him, apologising for Fame Academy.

"He gave me trouble for that, and said he and his girlfriend loved me.

"I don't have that sense of shame anymore but it's taken me three years to get it straight in my head.

"I don't feel proud or ashamed - I feel it was what it was and I accept it. I can take people saying they, thought I was great with . the ones who think I'm just that tosser off that show." However, there are some who looked beyond Fame Academy's glitzy sets and sea of egos, like Saul Davies and Mark Hunter - the guitar player and key-boards man from James, who scored with hits Sit Down, She's a Star and Come Home.

Ainslie says: "They'd seen Fame Academy and James hadn't long split up so they were looking for people to work with.

"It was a real boost that they were interested in me. James were a huge influence on my music taste when I was growing up."

Saul and Mark are now Ainslie's managers. Having guided him through the Fame Academy fallout, via the indignity of being dropped from record label Mercury before he'd even had the chance to release an album, Ainslie's now releasing his debut CD - Growing Flowers By Candlelight.

The album, whose title was nicked from a novel by Richard Brautigan, is a surprisingly delicate affair, free of the poppy bombast which cluttered his never-to-be-released "first" album.

It's a reflective and introspective record which could find a home with fans of Damien Rice, Nick Drake and acoustic REM.

Recorded in Suffolk and France (a chance encounter with a woman in Suffolk led to an offer to record in her disused chateaux outside Paris) the LP's littered with sparse and dusty story songs about girls, love and breakups.

Ainslie says: "There are a couple of radio friendly songs but it's never going to be an album which makes me a huge name. Recording it was one of the most magical summers of my life. It won't be all over the radio but I'm fine about that.

"I haven't played it to many folk, but interest has been incredible.

"I've had 50,000 hits in three months on my Myspace website and I've only played three gigs.

"People seem to remember."

The achievement is all the more remarkable when you consider he felt he no longer had it in him to make a record after being ditched by Mercury three years ago.

He says: "They'd released David, Sinead and Malachy's albums first and they didn't do so well. People who watch Fame Academy will watch the show and phone in but they'll not really buy records.

"So they got cold feet. I thought I took it well, but looking back, I didn't. The whole experience clearly affected me more than I thought.

"With a show like that you become very uncool very quickly, in my head at least because I have prejudices about that kind of TV the same as a lot of people do.

"People would say things and I'd take them to heart.

"There's no preparing you for that. The programme makers explain things to you but you can talk all you want. It really messes with your head."

The show did bring its benefits, though. A lucrative nationwide arena tour with the other stars made the then 24-year-old a wealthy young man for a while.

"The money could have served me a lot longer," he says. "I had always worked in bars and cafes and been on the dole so this was like a lottery win. I'd always grown up being pretty skint. It was the suddenness of it. It's like 'There's a pile of money - good luck'. I could have put a deposit on a flat, I could have invested some of it.

"But I spent it travelling - I wasted some of it.

"I don't regret that because, well, it'll come round again."

Of course, there was also the reported incident in a hotel room with an, ahem, exotic dancer, which the currently-single singer now jokily dismisses as a drunken "pants party".

No matter how innocent, the kiss-and-tell expose still upset his granny.

With money in his pocket and no concrete plans, Ainslie then set off travelling, traipsing his guitar through Europe and heading to visit mates in America - Wyoming, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.

"It was great fun," says the singer, whose pre-TV band Suburbia had flirted briefly with an American label. "I'd been dropped by Mercury at that point and I wasn't sure what to do. I took some money, some clothes and a guitar."

Returning to London, he soon set his sights on settling back north of the border - a process he now agrees was a healing one.

"Letting go of everything was ironically when things started coming to me," he says.

"It was then that I realised I was coming out the other end.

"Moving back to Edinburgh was a real turning point. I just wanted to go home, be around my mates be happy and take time out and relax. I didn't even know if I ever wanted to make a record."

But a chance encounter with Marc Pilley, lead singer of Scottish indie band Hobotalk, convinced him he was ready to take the next step. He says: "I played him some of the stuff I'd recorded over the years. He said I'd written an album, and that's when it started again. It took him to polish things then give it back to me."

The result will be launched tonight, at a special launch-party for the new album, which will, naturally, feature some of Ainslie's home-made pottery. It's hardly rock'n'roll'. But then it ain't light entertainment TV either.

"But I suppose I eventually got there," says Ainslie.

"I wouldn't change it at all - it's such a brilliant thing to have done.

"Reality TV was very exciting and new then - I'll always look back so fondly on it.

"It's funny - but it's just a tiny bit of my life now."