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By CLYNTON NAMUO New Hampshire Union Leader Correspondent Saturday, Feb. 24, 2007
DOVER – An odd coincidence has turned a local man into an American Idol bet maker's dream and morphed him from Idol ignorant to show aficionado.
When Tony Holmes bought a new cell phone last year, he expected his fair share of night calls from his job refueling planes at Pease.
But the last thing he expected to get was calls from American Idol fangirls.
He gets both now.
American Idol's voting number is 1-866-IDOLS and then the number of the contestant. Unfortunately for Holmes his number is 866-IDOL.
He only learned this after getting calls for Taylor Hicks and Katharine McPhee last year.
Lucky for Holmes, he had just gotten his phone as Idol wrapped its fifth season and received only a handful of calls last year.
Unlucky for him though, the show started its sixth season's voting portion on Tuesday and he got 84 calls. On Wednesday, it climbed to about 190.
"The repercussions are next month I'm going to get a bunch of phone calls from Verizon saying, 'this person's got your number on their phone bill,'" Holmes said of the inevitably confused callers.
Although Holmes thought about changing his number, the hassle of telling everyone the new number dissuaded him. Instead, he changed the message on his phone to tell callers they need to dial "1" and he stopped answering it on Idol nights.
Plus, he says, he kind of likes getting the calls.
"I like the insight on who's actually going to get vote," he said. "It's hard not to catch some of the hype on it. It's funny, now I'm involved, pretty funny."
Many callers are just too confused though and leave messages despite Holmes' answering machine; each one pushes "1" before leaving a short blurb saying who they want to win.
Based on those messages, Holmes said he expects powerhouse singer Lakisha Jones to go far.
He also sees a bright future for former backup singer Melinda Doolittle, and not just because she's his favorite. He has even learned to dish it out like a true Idol fan.
"There's a couple of them that could really belt it out but there's some of them that don't really want to bring it," he says.
In an effort to limit his calls, Holmes got WMUR to do a story on his dilemma on Thursday. Unfortunately, that led to more odd calls.
"I got calls saying, 'Dude that sucks you should really change your number,' people I don't even know," he said.
It is unlikely this story will help that phenomenon, but Holmes says he is happy this season of Idol doesn't include his worst nightmare: a contestant from New Hampshire, a prospect that would surely increase his call volume.
"That'd be insane," he said.