By Stevens Muendo

With the cream of the showbiz world in attendance and thousands of viewers watching from all over East Africa, the region’s premier music reality TV show began on a foul note.

The embarrassment that Esther Nabaasa, TPF2’s winner, suffered on stage was beyond comprehension and might haunt her for a long time.

The soft-spoken songstress was the showstopper at the Tusker Project Fame 3 (TPF3) premier show that Sunday evening. She was given rousing applause as soon as she hit the stage. But alas! Her microphone was off and for about a minute, she sung as sympathetic fans shouted, begging presenters Sheila Mwanyigha and Mitch Egwang to do something.

And worse, as soon as Mitch gave her another microphone to start afresh, the show wound up prematurely and she had to stop.

Esther was clearly disappointed on the same stage where she had been joyously crowned a year ago. And the crowd murmured about it as Nakaaya and Valerie, the premier TPF finalists — who had graced the stage earlier in the night with a lovely duet — showed sympathy.

Earlier in the evening, Sheila and her make-up artiste seemed to have differed at the backstage.

Twice mid the show, she ran backstage, adjusted her long black dress and coated her cleavage-exposing dress with a long beaded necklace, which she later abandoned, opting for a light cream scarf.

And there was laughter when DJ CK, the business magnet was caught in the mix. He had walked from his VIP seat to pay homage to the judges during the break only for the camera’s in the live transmitted show to start rolling again as he walked back to his seat.

But these are just but a little of what’s in store. TPf3 is set to keep fans glued to their TV set’s for the next eight weeks as the 12 competitors battle it out for the whopping Sh5 million cash prize and a coveted one year recording record with Gallo Records.

On Sunday night, drama among the contestants had begun to unfold as eight of the 15 short listed contestants from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and new entrants Rwanda fought for the last four places for the finals.