NORM: Mirage signing 'Talent' winner
Ventriloquist/impressionist Terry Fator, whose popularity has exploded since he won NBC's "America's Got Talent," will be introduced Tuesday at a news conference as the new headliner at The Mirage.
A 2 p.m. news conference has been scheduled, Vegas Confidential has learned.
Fator will move into the theater vacated by fellow impressionist Danny Gans, who moves to Wynn Las Vegas late this year after almost nine years at The Mirage.
How's this for irony: Fator told me last November, after he signed a 15-show deal with the Las Vegas Hilton, that seeing Gans perform was the turning point of his career.
About 21/2 years ago, during a car ride from Las Vegas to Butte, Mont., the ventriloquist began singing a Garth Brooks song. His manager, John Raymond, a Butte native, interjected, "Have you ever seen Danny Gans?"
Fator hadn't, but on his next trip to Vegas, he attended Gans' show and the light bulb went off. No dummy, Fator switched from doing comedy with his eight characters to singing impressions with them.
After winning "America's Got Talent" last summer, he became a YouTube sensation.
As of Saturday, his breakthrough appearance on the NBC show had registered 10.5 million visits on YouTube, when his pig-tailed character Emma Taylor sang
Etta James' classic "At Last."
