A TEENAGE Ringwood duo have experienced the ups and downs of the music industry having missed their X Factor auditions after getting stuck in a lift.

Michelle Scott and Grace Stuart, both 17, were in the Journal last month because they had made it through the first round of the popular ITV show.

Unfortunately, the girls, who call themselves Unleashed, were left disappointed as their audition failed to get off the ground.

Instead of singing in front of their idol, Simon Cowell, they spent the time contemplating the four walls of a lift.

The day had started badly when the girls missed the original bus to take them to Bournemouth train station, where they missed their train.

They caught the next one to Waterloo and then took a tube to Arsenal.

Grace said: "We got a bit lost getting out of the tube as we left our map on the train."

Eventually they found the Emirates Stadium, but Michelle had trouble with her shoes and kept losing them on the stairs and even fell over at one stage.

To make things easier, they decided to use the lift.

They saw a sign above the door that read: "Please shut the doors."

Michelle said: "So we just hit this massive red button."

The doors shut and the girls pressed the button again, but the lift went down and the doors would not open.

"It was a glass lift so people could see us in there," said Grace.

While in the lift, for half an hour, they made friends with an African man called Joe, who tried to keep them calm.

Michelle, who confessed to being claustrophobic, said: "I was almost having a panic attack!"

Despite banging on the side of the lift and shouting, people just walked past and ignored them.

Eventually, a security guard came to their aid and sent the lift up to the right floor. But it was too late.

The girls were then told that they were more than an hour late and it would not be fair to make everyone else wait for their auditions, despite Grace pleading with them just to see Simon Cowell.

"I'm in love with him," she said.

Now they will have to wait for next year to be unleashed, although the girls already seem to be attracting fame.

They have been mentioned on radio and have recently been invited to the GMTV studios to talk about the day when they could have been unleashed on the nation.