Stacey Solomon

February 2010

“Who are you?” she giggles when I call.
I’m the 13th Duke of Wybourne... no she wouldn’t understand that Fast Show reference. Stacey Solomon is only 20. And there’s a lot she doesn’t understand.
Such is her scatterbrain charm, that -- alongside a vaulting voice -- resulted in her coming third, behind Olly Murs and Joe McElderry in the sixth series of the X Factor.
There have been rumours of a romance with Olly.
“They’re just funny I think because me and him get on so well. We’re just like, if only people knew the truth it’d be really funny.”
The truth being that they’re not going out. Keep up.
You’re more like brother and sister, then?
“Yeah, we are like brother and sister.”
So you’re single?
“Yeah.”
What do you look for in a man?
“Someone funny. I used to out with these really ugly people because they’re funny.”
I’m sure they’d be delighted to hear that.
She adds: “Looks don’t really bother me. I’m a personality person.”
What about an England footballer, I hear there’s one who has just become available?
“Oh I’m sure there’s a few available,” she titters.
Eh? She didn’t get that. Oh she did...
“I want someone loyal, someone faithful.”
And someone prepared to look after her two-year-old son Zacharay.
“Yeah but I’m not a looker. I wouldn’t really go out and look for someone. I think if you are going to be with someone you just meet them. It just happens.”
She claims that being on the X Factor hasn’t meant more blokes chatting her up.
“Not that I’ve noticed anyway.”
Stacey is in Cardiff when we speak, on The X Factor Live Tour 2010 that includes eight of the finalists from the last series, among them John and Edward Grimes a.k.a. Jedward.
I bet they’re annoying, aren’t they?
“Not at all no. I think they’re the funniest people I’ve ever met. They hilarious.”
Everyone on the tour is, she says, “lovely” but she spends most playtime with Olly and the twins.
During the show Stacey sings Who Wants To Live Forever?, What A Wonderful World and The Scientist plus I’ve Got A Feeling and You Are Not Alone with the rest of the finalists.
There’s footage of the Michael Jackson song on YouTube where each walks out to begin a new line of the song, except Jedward. They appear not to be singing.
“You probably can’t hear them because everyone’s cheering so much,” she says.
“People are going mad. I can’t really hear what’s going on because of the screaming.
“It’s fun ain’t it? I would. Every concert I’ve ever been to I’m jumping up and down screaming.”
Her first was the Spice Girls when she was just six.
“I think when you’re a kid whatever’s in is in, ain’t it? And I thought they were the best thing ever when I was little.”
But it was boy band Five who dominated the wall space when she was growing up.
That was in Dagenham, Essex, which has prompted her being given the label, Dagenham Diva.
“It makes me larf. I never do anything really diva-ish.”
Is she loaded now, since being on the X Factor?
“No! Who’s rich? No one is ever rich. Even if you earn loads of money the taxman takes half.”
Little bit of politics...
Of course, she hasn’t earned a huge amount since appearing on the show. That will come with a Leona Lewis style record deal, which Stacey is still seeking.
“The ultimate is to get a record deal and be really successful but I’d like to do other things as well, like presenting and theatre work.”
If she has to go back to Havering College to finish her performing arts diploma then so be it.
“I don’t see any shame in going back.”
For now she’s enjoying the spotlight playing to sold-out arenas.
So you’re on stage about half-an-hour in total?
“Summink like that, don’t ask me, it just flies by.”
But it leaves you with a lot of free time backstage. What do you do?
“You have to keep getting ready, the changes are quite quick, you have a break where you have to meet guests... you don’t really stop to be honest.”
Her son is with her today but not for the whole tour.
“Because we are here for a whole week he can settle but I won’t drag him everywhere.”
Does he know what mum’s doing?
“Not at all and he doesn’t care. He just enjoys the food.”
And lots of attention, no doubt.
“Too much attention.”
He’s not the only one. The tabloids have enjoyed running stories on Stacey -- and they’re not always correct.
“There are so many things I’ve looked at and thought ‘huh!’ The funniest was the other day when I walked out my house with no make-up on and really horrible clothes because I was going for a spray tan and you don’t want to get spray tan over your nice clothes. And they were like ‘Stacey’s not doing so well, look at her in her normal clothes’. God forbid I should go out the house in normal clothes!”
The tour, which comes to the Trent FM Arena on Monday and Tuesday, will be her first visit to Nottingham. And she has no idea what to expect.
What about Robin Hood?
“Oh yeah, Robin Hood and Little John. Where’s Sherwood Forest, is that in Nottingham (which she pronounces “No-i-gum”)?
It’s in Nottinghamshire.
“Is that inside No-i-gum?”
It’s in the county.
“Have you got a little memorial?”
There’s a statue.
“Ohhh!” she gasps.
“Wicked. I’m a bit of a fan of things like that.”

The X Factor Live Tour 2010, Trent FM Arena, March 1 and 2, 7.30pm, £28.50, 08444 124624, www.trentfmarena.com

Robert Bathurst

February 2010

Many years ago Robert Bathurst was walking across Trent Bridge when something rather odd happened.
“It was after dark and this guy took my arm,” he says.
“He had a Trent Buses tie and a Robin Hood hat on.
“When he took my arm I realised he was mine for the evening, if you know what I mean.”
Bathurst was in Nottingham with a production at Nottingham Playhouse.
“I had digs on the Trent and one evening I saw there was a match on at the City Ground.”
So there he was, casually strolling over Trent Bridge to watch Forest play Everton.
“The only ticket I could get for him was at the Everton end. And there we were, sat in the Everton, with this guy in a Robin Hood hat. I had to sort of sit on him and say ‘look we’re supporting Everton, do you understand?’ But he didn’t quite get on board. So when Collymore scored he was the only one at the Everton end stood up and screaming, with me trying to pull him down.
“Fortunately no-one around us seemed to mind, they were cool about it.
“Then after the game we were stood at a bus stop and he said he needed to get to Mansfield. Someone there said they were going that way so it was like passing the baton and off he went.”
Bathurst, who played the cheating husband David opposite Hermione Norris in Cold Feet, has also been to Meadow Lane and seen Test cricket at Trent Bridge during his stays in the city, each time with a production at the Playhouse: The Importance Of Being Earnest, The Nose and The Comedy Of Errors.
This time it’s Noel Coward’s Present Laughter at the Theatre Royal.
“It’s one of his classic comedies. The play is 70 years old but it still stands up brilliantly. It’s rather a good take on celebrity loneliness and isolation.
“It’s about a tirelessly egocentric actor in his flat. He has his close confidantes, his ex-wife, his secretary and the people who raise money for his shows. They’re the only people he really communicates with. He basks on the love of strangers but whenever they come anywhere near him and declare their love, he runs in the other direction.
“Which is very contemporary as a theme, because you see a lot people like that who find ordinary people frightening.”
Are you like that in any way?
“I fear not,” he laughs.
That said Bathurst, who also appeared in TV drama Hornblower, doesn’t enjoy the celebrity culture.
His peak of mainstream popularity came with the nineties ITV comedy drama Cold Feet.
“It was huge and oddly enough still remains so,” he says.
“I’m astounded how people still talk about it.”
He adds: “I don’t play the celebrity game. I’m not holding myself out to dry like that. I think if you let newspapers in to your home, that’s where madness lies.
“I have a perfectly normal private life that remains private.”
Here’s what we do know...
Bathurst was born in West Africa, lived in Ireland as a boy and attended a convent then a boarding school, then aged nine a monastery school in England.
While at Cambridge he became president of the Footlights and toured Australia.
Theatre roles followed, during which time he married painter Victoria Threlfall (they have three children), then made a leap to TV in Malcolm Bradbury’s Anything More Would Be Greedy.
Since then he’s juggled television and theatre, most significantly in Steven Moffat’s Joking Apart then in 1997, Cold Feet.
Other TV work has included the sitcom Get Well Soon, Goodbye Mr Steadman, White Teeth, My Dad’s The Prime Minister and the BBC’s Emma.
Does he prefer theatre to television?
“There’s a cold commercial reality that you have to be on television in order to get good parts on stage but I do enjoy both. I always try and mix it up.”
His first experience of Noel Coward was in his twenties watching Blythe Spirit, Hayfever and Privates Lives.
“But I’d never seen Present Laughter - luckily. There’s a perception that you should do it like Noel Coward spoke it, which I think is really wrong.”
He adds: “Performing him has made me appreciate him more. It is beautiful stuff. Every word is really thought through. And it’s brilliantly funny.”
Bathurst, 53, plays self-obsessed actor Gary Essendine, with director Belinda Lang as his long-suffering secretary Monica, Serena Evans as estranged wife Liz and Virginia Stride as housekeeper Miss Erikson.
“He’s man who likes to be in complete control of events and everyone around him but by the second half, events completely spiral out of his control. So what we see is a very pompous man brought low.”

Present Laughter is at the Theatre Royal, from Monday to Saturday, 7:30pm (Wed mat 2pm/Sat mat 2.30pm), £11-£25, 0115 989 5555.

David Essex

February 2010


My weekend
The weekend is all about catching up with friends and family.
On Saturday I’ll be up pretty early and I’ll have a look through emails and sort a bit of business out. I’ll probably watch a bit of football, go to Upton Park or check a game out on the telly if I’m working.
Sunday will be the papers, a bit of breakfast, get over and see one of the kids in the afternoon, then I’ll go to a local restaurant.
I like a pub lunch as well but I’m not really a drinker so it’s more the lunches rather than going off to a pub for the evening.
I’m not much of a cook. It has to be visual. Anything in a frying pan I can cope with but if it disappears in to an oven I don’t quite know what’s going on. So I’ve never mastered the famous Sunday roast.
Sport is a big passion of mine. I’ve played a lot of football and cricket over the years. I still suffer as a West Ham fan. I do have a soft spot for Notts Forest. I think teams like that should be in the top flight.
It’s more watching sport than playing these days. I’ve three sons and they sometimes drag me in to the garden. And they’re pretty good. The twins are at West Ham Academy and they played cricket for Surrey when they were kids. The older boy played for Surrey too but he’s not much of a footballer. Just don’t tell him I said that.
There are no TV programmes I have to see. I’ll watch news programmes and documentaries. I watch Al Jazeera a lot. I think it gives you a different perspective. It’s kind of interesting to switch to the BBC for a slight variation on a particular story.
I went to see Inglourious Basterds at the cinema and I liked that. I saw The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, that was quite moving. And I saw Up on a plane but I didn’t have my 3D glasses with me (laughs). I get quite teary with things. I cried watching Finding Nemo. I’m a bit of soft touch really.
I prefer theatre to film and that relationship between the live audience and the live players. That it lives for that performance, then changes for the next one.
I don’t do gyms or anything like that. I’m always racing about anyway marching from one meeting to the next or from one rehearsal to another. That keeps me fairly active.
I’ve never been a great reader of books. I wish I was but my concentration starts to drift after about eight pages. I think that’s all down to my teacher back at secondary school who made us read Silas Marner (by George Eliot). That turned me off books. Which is ironic because I wrote my autobiography all by myself and it was a No. 1 bestseller. Maybe I should read more.
I’m not a big fan of concerts either, ironically. I do listen to music at home. I’m forced to with two sons bashing about but I’m not really aware of what’s in the charts to be honest.
I’ve got four children. The last time I counted anyway (laughs). The twins are 21. The other two from the other marriage are in their thirties.
I’ve three grandchildren. The eldest, he’s six, I’ve taken him out to Hamley’s, The London Eye, The Lion King, a trip on a boat down the Thames... I did get him to the London Museum but that only lasted ten minutes because he kept misbehaving.

David Essex appears on the Once In A Lifetime Tour 2010 alongside The Osmonds, Leo Sayer and Les McKeown’s Legendary Bay City Rollers, which comes to the Trent FM Arena on June 29. Tickets are £36.50, call 08444 124624.

A-Ha

February 2010

Call that snow? Magne Furuholmen is deep in it, in the Norweigian mountains.
“There’s seven feet of snow outside my window,” says A-Ha’s guitarist.
“It’s minus 18 but there’s a bright shining sun. I’m up in the cabin and I’m doing all right.”
How many homes do you have?
“You know, one for every season. You’ve got to when you’re living in Norway.”
Odd that he’d choose the cabin in that case unless he’s a winter chaser. But enough of that, we’re here to talk about the end of A-Ha, as the trio have announced their farewell tour.
“It’s a perfect symmetrical ending,” he says, referring to the 25th anniversary of their debut album Hunting High & Low.
“We’ve had a fantastic run together but it’s a long time to be working with anyone.”
But their latest album, last year’s Foot Of The Mountain, was a success, reaching No. 5 in the UK and earning critical acclaim. Why stop now?
“It’s the perfect opportunity to leave the party before you get thrown out.”
Though he admits: “It’s hard to walk away from any success. But I want to be brave and take steps that offer new and creative challenges.”
You can sense from what he says next that not all is rosy in the A-Ha camp anyway.
“It’s taking us four years to make records, and it involves a lot of debate and disagreements and it’s not always something that comes out feeling like a strong team effort.”
He adds: “This is an opportunity to say good bye to our fans while people have a good memory of A-Ha.”
Furuholmen, Morten Harket and Paul Waaktaar-Savoy have sold in excess of 35 million albums in the past 25 years. Among their 15 UK Top 10 singles are Hunting High & Low, The Sun Always Shines On TV, Train Of Thought, Cry Wolf, Bond theme The Living Daylights and Take On Me, which reached number 1 in 27 countries.
In 1991 their show at the Maracana Stadium in Rio De Janeiro earned a Guinness World Record for the largest-ever audience attendance at a paid concert – 196,000 people.
The band regrouped in 1998 after a four year break and enjoyed a new audience, he says.
“It’s been gratifying since then to see how the climate around A-Ha has changed, from being a nostalgic 80s trip of teenage hysteria to serious music lovers owning up to being closet A-Ha fans.”
They include Coldplay, Kanye West, Oasis and U2.
It was during the sabbatical that Furuholmen had began working as a visual artist. That’s what he’ll be doing when the group split at the end of the year.
“That alongside new and exciting collaborations in music,” he says.
“It’s inspiring to try new things.”
The farewell tour starts next week in Argentina, before heading to America, Europe, Australia, Russia, Japan and then the UK, ending in Oslo in December.
“Nottingham will be one of the last gigs we play together so hopefully it will be quite magical, certainly emotional and special, for us too.
“I certainly like to think that people will leave the arena thinking it was the best A-Ha show they’d ever seen.”

A-Ha, Trent FM Arena, Sunday November 21, £28.50, £38.50 and £55, 0844 412 4624, www.gigsandtours.com

Thoresby Colliery Band

February 2010


A Notts brass band is hoping for chart success with the release of a new album on a major label.
Island Records, home to Mariah Carey, Lionel Richie and Bon Jovi, will next week release The Music Lives On Now The Mines Have Gone. The 15-track CD is compilation of songs from the UK’s best brass bands, including two from Thoresby Colliery Band.
“We’re really pleased to be part of something quite so big,” said euphonium player Simon Willis.
“It means a lot more exposure than we’re used to.”
The CD marks the 25th anniversary of the end of the miners’ strike, which Simon, 39, can recall.
“I grew up in Ollerton and I used to have to walk past the pit lane to get to school. I remember there being massive crowds of people. A lot of picketing went off at Ollerton and there was a fatality there during some of the striking.”
He added: “There was conflict at the school. Some of my friends’ dad’s were working, others were striking.”
His own father had left the mines before the strike and worked as a taxi driver.
Only one of the 30 members of the band, which started in 1948, is a miner.
“He still doesn’t like to talk about it,” said Simon, a music teacher.
“It still rankles with people to this day. One of the guys I knew from school still gets grief because his dad was a working miner.”
Other band members are teachers, students, military musicians, small businessmen, civil servants, IT professionals and a police officer.
Ages range from 15 to early fifities.
“I joined the Thoresby Colliery Junior Band when I was nine and I’ve played in many colliery bands since then,” said Simon.
He was a member of the Grimethorpe Colliery Band for four years and appeared in the award-winning movie Brassed Off.
“I was one of the band playing extras. I get a bit of screen exposure. Maybe half-a-dozen times.”
Are Grimethorpe the Manchester United of colliery bands?
“Not because of Brassed Off but because they are one of the finest brass bands in the world.”
The CD features classical and popular pieces, from Largo from the New World Symphony and Concerto de Aranjuez to McArthur Park and He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.
Thoresby’s contributions are Songs of the Quay, based on folk tune The Keel Row and You Needed Me, a hit for Anne Murray in the 70s.
Grimethorpe have four tracks on the CD but Thoresby are the only other band with more than one track.
“That makes us Liverpool,” he laughed.
“The film brought brass bands in to the mainstream. I’d like to think the CD will have a similar effect. That people start going to brass band concerts again and realise it’s not the rumpty tumpty stuff that you might hear in the park on a Sunday afternoon. There’s more to it than that.”

The Music Lives On Now the Mines Have Gone CD is released on Monday. (MAR 1). For information visit www.themusicliveson.co.uk or www.thoresbyband.co.uk

Lee Mack

February 2010


He sounds mildly irked when I suggest that he couldn’t pull a looker like Lucy.
“You are on about the characters, yeah?”
Obviously. The characters in BBC sitcom Not Going Out which he writes and stars as ice cream man Lee, flatmate to the pretty and successful Lucy (Sally Bretton), sister of his best mate Tim (Tim Vine).
It centres on his pursuit of her.
“Well, I know what you mean,” says Mack.
“To a degree. But would you really stay at a hotel like Fawlty Towers? Probably not. The most important thing anyone ever told me about sitcom was that it had as much to do with drama as it did with pantomime. You’ve got meet some where between the two.”
In the last series Lee and Lucy almost shared a kiss. So what of series four? Surely he doesn’t succeed and end up in a relationship with her?
“We go through it at the beginning of every series. Right, are these two characters going to get together or not? And it’s a dilemma because the general rule of sitcom is, don’t change it. But then again we don’t concentrate on their relationship. In some episode we don’t even mention it.
“It’s not like Only Fool & Horses which is all about them wanting to be millionaires. It’s not all about me and her getting together.”
He adds: “It’s a difficult one. We’re still in the process of thrashing that one back and forth. I wake up every morning and change my mind. Right, this series we get together and start a family and it’s a family sitcom next year. Then the next morning I think, no, we’ll keep it as it is.”
To be honest I always figured it was called Not Going Out because they never went out. That the characters of Lee, Tim, Lucy and cleaner Barbara (MIranda Hart) were always in the flat.
Seems it refers to Lee and Lucy living together but not being a couple.
It’s the only gag that hasn’t hit home in the award-winning sitcom that is set to return to BBC1 in the Autumn.
Although initially it was cut from the schedules.
“It was a six month gap between the cancellation and the recommission,” says Mack.
“And in that time I booked in a 100 date tour. It was booked in on the basis that we wouldn’t be doing the sitcom.”
It means trying to write a six-episode series while on the road.
“It’s at least six months work. There’s so much more to it than writing the jokes. There’s all the boring bits like the structure. And 70 or 80 per cent of the workload is mine. I’ll write three of the scripts on my own and three with one other person. Then we’ll read it all out to a live theatre audience. Much like a radio script. To test the jokes. The deadline for that is the end of July.”
Added to that he’s developing a pilot for BBC1.
How is going to manage it?
“That’s a good question. I’ll have a breakdown in August.”
The tour runs until November and includes three Nottingham dates. But there’ll be no more, he says.
“The DVD of the tour will be out in November. Once that’s out you can’t really do the same jokes. And I’ll be sick of them by then anyway.”
I don’t know. Some gags are worth repeating. The Angel Delight routine from the last tour (about his senile nan) I could hear again.
“It’s funny how that joke is one that people shout out a lot. ‘Do your Angel Delight joke!’. Of course, once you’ve said that the joke’s finished because that’s the punchline.”
Unlike fellow Not Going Out stand-up Tim Vine, Mack tested out his material, not in the back of a taxi, but at comedy clubs.
“He was reading it out to the taxi driver?”
It’s true. In a recent interview with EG, Vine admitted it as how he rehearsed for his tour, in the back of a cab while travelling to and from his panto run with Jane Asher.
Says Mack: “As far as Tim’s concerned if it’s one person sat, there it’s an audience.”
His process of preparing for a tour means weeks sat at a computer writing gags.
“Nine out of the ten won’t be heard. One of them will pass the test and I’ll try that out with about 20 others in a little club. Then 20 per cent of them will make it to the next stage. Eventually you have a rough one hour show and you book in some preview shows.
“I probably overbooked the previews to be honest but I didn’t want to take any risks.”
One of them was at Nottingham’s Just The Tonic at the end of last year.
“It’s a great club that,” says Mack, a team captain on the BBC panel game Would I Lie To You?
“I’ve done it loads of times over the years. Because comedy has got so big over the past few years -- it’s very much a big business -- there are very few old school promoters left. Those that are doing it for the right reasons and not solely for the money. Most would book whoever will bring in the most amount of people but those like Darrell (Martin) will still police it. If he thinks someone is cr*p, he won’t book them.”
Does he feel the need to mention Not Going Out in his stand-up show?
“I don’t but the audience do. I get asked about it every night.
“In fact it was because of that the news got out that it had been recommissioned. Someone shouted out ‘Is it going to be recommissioned?’ and I said ‘yes’. A reviewer was in and before you knew, it was in The Guardian.”
Of late comedians have been throwing out their autobiographies, many of whom are barely in to their career stride. Frankie Boyle, Justin Lee Collins, Alan Carr and Dara O’Briain published their’s in time for Christmas. So where’s his?
“I’m the kind of person who’d say I’d never write an autobiography but it’s a very easy moral decision to make when you’ve not been offered it. The test comes when they say ‘we’ll give you all this money...’ So I don’t know. I’d be very interested in writing a book. I’m not sure my life is that interesting.”
I beg to differ. Your grandfather was a music hall entertainer, you worked at Pontin’s as a Blue Coat, at the bingo... surely there’s a wealth of material?
“On paper. But you could be working in a boring office for ten years and have a lot of material from that, like The Office. A lot of comedy comes from the mundane. If I ask someone in the audience what they do for a living and they say ‘a circus clown’ there’s probably less material in that than someone who works at Curry’s.”
He adds: “In reviews and interviews it often comes up that Lee Mack was a Blue Coat or worked at the bingo and there’s a connotation with that of this wannabe showbiz person and that was completely not the case.
“I came through the alternative circuit in the 1990s.
“The bingo hall was just a job. And as a Blue Coat I was the sports organiser. I was never on stage. They had nothing to do with showbiz aspirations whatsoever.
“It used to annoy me but I quite like it now. I’m not as bothered about being as cool as I was ten years ago. I quite like the idea of being phenomenally uncool.”


Lee Mack, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham, March 4, May 22, November 26. Tickets £18.50/£20.50, 0115 989 5555,
www.royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk

Victoria Gray

February 2010

She is inbetween movement classes.
Eh?
“Thinking of different centrepoints for different emotions.”
Eh?
“When you have to take on a character from an opera, say, you’re being snooty you think of your chest and sticking it out and being pompous.”
Nope, don’t get that.
The classes, whatever they’re for, are part of an eight year course at the Royal College of Music in London which Bilsthorpe opera trainee Victoria Gray is half-way through.
It’s the stage at which Katherine Jenkins quit to become a popera star.
Victoria, 22, wouldn’t mind the fame and riches but her focus is on finishing the course and becoming a professional opera singer.
But she needs to raise £10,000 per year to carry on with the post-graduate degree then opera school.
“The tuition you get here is the best but it’s so expensive,” she says.
The figure covers the tuition fees. She pays the rent with a part-time job as a singing waitress.
A what?
“It’s a restaurant in Lancaster Gate called Bel Canto. People will be eating their dinner, the piano will start up and one of us will sing opera while walking around the tables. It’s such a funny concept but it really works.
“And it’s great practice. You’re testing out new pieces and new arias all the time.”
The former Minster School pupil was a member of Cantamus, the all girl choir based in Mansfield, travelling to Germany, Italy and China, where, in 2007, they were crowned World Choir Olympic Champions.
“I was with the choir for ten years and it’s where I got my passion for it and the necessary discipline,” she says.
Victoria was also the first singer to win The Nottingham Young Musician Competition, in 2005.
Dad, a former boxer, is a court usher while mum works for the NHS. Her musical gift comes more from her grandparents.
“Both my parents are tone deaf,” she laughs.
“The voice comes from my grandma. She did music at university. My grandad was one of the first members of the Salvation Army band and he played trombone with the Edwinstowe Colliery Band.”
As a petite blonde Victoria knows she’s far from the traditional bulky opera singer.
“The first opera I saw, I thought it would be somebody fat with horns on their head, screaming.”
I’ve had those nightmares.
“But it was so much more than that. They were so physical and their acting conveyed every emotion you could possible imagine. And even though it was in Italian you’d be laughing with them, then crying.”
Aren’t most opera singers great hefers?
“No, not at all. These days you’re turned away if you’re overweight because you have to be so physically fit to sustain a role. I once had to leap on to a tenor’s back while singing.”
As part of a sponsorship deal with Mansfield’s Direct Recording Systems, Victoria will soon record a demo and video to help sell her to prospective sponsors.
So, following Katherine Jenkins isn’t out of the question?
“I really respect what she’s done in bringing opera to the masses but she’ll never have a career in an opera house. And that’s what I really want. To travel the world singing opera.”
You could do both.
“I’d love to eventually.”
So if Simon Cowell offered you an album deal singing Westlife opera style...?
“I would. It’d be a great way of earning the money to continue my studies.”
Should she make it as a professional singer Victoria will be following in the footsteps of another ex-Minster School pupil: Alvin Stardust
“Who?”
Ask your dad.
Maybe you should change your name to Victoria Starburst.
“I like that. I’m going to use that.”
You read it here first...

Victoria Gray, with Anthony Gregory, the Cantamus Ensemble and Michael Neaum, Queen Elizabeth School, Mansfield, Saturday February 20, 7.30 pm.
Tickets: £10, 01623 627764

Jennifer Batten (Michael Jackson)

February 2010


When she first heard the news of Michael Jackson’s death, Jennifer Batten didn’t believe it.
“I’d heard so many rumours about him over the years that I thought it was probably another rumour.”
Then realisation turned to anger.
“I was angry at how he’d been treated the past 15 years or so. The whole lawsuit thing and the press had things to a level it didn’t belong at.”
She hadn’t seen or spoken to him in 12 years, not since the end of the HIStory World Tour, her third playing guitar for the King Of Pop. The three jaunts totaled one-and-a-half years and over four-and-a-half-million people.
“There was Michael and his gang, then the band and dancers, and the roadies would travel on a different schedule. But at rehearsals everyone had access to him. And he was very open.
“Once we were on the road he couldn’t hang out with us, unless he shut down amusement parks, which he did several times over the years so we could hang out. Or if we were out (on the road) during Christmas or Thanksgiving he’d have big dinners with us.”
She adds: “We would have a group prayer before we’d go on the stage. But after a show he was gone before we hit the last note, for security reasons.”
Batten was turned on to the guitar through jealousy.
“My sister had a guitar and I didn’t,” she says.
“I told my parents that was what I wanted for my next birthday and my dad got me an electric guitar and some lessons. I really took to it.”
She adds: “My sister doesn’t play any more. She’s a book editor.”
Sounds dull in comparison.
“I know!,” she laughs.
Batten trained at a Hollywood music school and was playing in six bands simultaneously when she heard of an audition to play in Jackson’s band for his Bad world tour in 1988.
Out of more than a hundred, she got the gig.
Did he particularly want a female guitarist?
“I never talked to Michael about it but he was always looking for something different, something to wow people. I think it was a combination of that and that I could play the Beat It solo.”
This weekend she’ll be holding a workshop to explain her guitar techniques.
“I tear apart the stuff that I do and open it up to any questions. It’s mostly the anoraks who turn out to that,” she laughs.
Do they always want to know how to play the Beat It solo?
“I try to avoid it because I’ve played it so many times, I’m kinda done with that,” she laughs.
The Michael Jackson movie, This Is It, showed another female guitarist rehearsing with him for the 02 shows that never were. After playing on the previous three tours was she offended not to be asked?
“He wanted a whole new thing with young musicians and young dancers,” says Batten, who has also worked with guitar great Jeff Beck.
“And I think it was a smart move because I had done it three times already and he had someone who was so excited about it like I was the first time.”
How does she remember him?
“He was very even tempered, he was a creative tornado, he was very much hands on. And very kind to people. When things went wrong he never lost his temper, never yelled at anybody. He was a joy to work for. A very pure spirit who wanted the best for people.”


Jennifer Batten, The Guitar Bar at Deux, Clumber Avenue, Sherwood Rise, Saturday February 20, 1pm to 4pm. Tickets: £35, 07770 226926, www.theguitarbar.co.uk

The Noisettes

My Weekend


I don’t have a typical weekend anymore and that makes me yearn for one. If I have one, which might be the first in three months, I try and reconnect with the domestic goddess in me.
I’ll go to the market and buy stuff to cook and a nice bottle of wine. Then I’ll have a bad TV marathon.
I did that recently where I watched the EastEnders omnibus, an episode of Poirot, which I love, then Blade Runner and Love Actually.
It was a Sunday. I’d been out with the girls on the Saturday night, dancing and drinking, after we’d seen a matinee of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof in the West End with James Earl Jones.
So, if I get a weekend off I’ll do something like that.
Friday night I’ll be tired, so I’ll try and sort the junk in my flat.
I never get in to DVD box sets like Lost or 24 or CSI. That’s not my thing. I like music programmes and some of the stuff on Dave. I know this sounds bad but I really like Heartbeat. My favourites are detective dramas like Poirot, Columbo, Ironside and Murder She Wrote. I love the attention to detail, the outfits, the music... all that kind of stuff.
And weird documentaries, about a baby with six legs or something and people believe she’s a Hindu goddess.
The last film I saw at the cinema was Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces. I don’t get the time to go often so it has to be really bad but entertaining or something intense I can really get lost in. I’ve never been in to middle of the road stuff.
I am a really good cook when I’m not in a rush. I like cooking for other people. I’m from a huge African family so I’m not used to cooking just for myself. If I do I’m very lazy.
I was washing rice from the age of six, although though the boys in the family didn’t have to do anything. We’d all be playing outside climbing a tree and you’d get called in to wash a vat of rice. While your cousin or brother could stay in the tree.
I love Come Dine With Me. If I was on that I’d do a slow roasted leg of lamb or pork belly, something classic and Western but with an African inspired gravy or vegetable rice.
I do keep fit. I try to swim and do sit-ups so I can keep jumping up and down on stage and be able to sing upside down. I have to do that twice a week. I’ll find the nearest gym or leisure centre in whichever city I’m in and do 40 laps, about 50 sit-ups, then have a sauna to sweat out all the booze.
I’m reading Samuel R Delany at the moment. He’s an African-American science fiction writer who inspired people like Philip Moorcock and Philip K Dick. The way he plays with words breaks my heart. It’s called Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, which is one of the most beautiful phrases I’ve ever read on paper.
Zadie Smith’s latest book was really good as well.
The key to a perfect weekend is the company. You can do the walks, you can go to the cinema, the restaurant, the play, the gig... but for me it’s got to be with someone.
Who?
Hopefully they’re just round the corner.

The Noisettes play Rock City on Monday February 22, 7.30pm. Tickets are £14 from the venue, call 0871 310 0000.

Nik Kershaw

My Weekend: Nik Kershaw

I didn't used to do weekends as such as every day was a possible work day. But now I make a point of having a weekend. I relish doing all the normal stuff, like mowing the lawn and creosoting the, erm, cat.
It'll usually begin with me making pancakes on Saturday morning and cleaning up puppy poo.
I will rarely play music to relax as that is the day job. I do that all week in the studio. I'll perhaps play a bit of Vaughan Williams while I'm reading the Sunday papers but that's all really.
As well as the papers I'll pick up a book. At the moment I'm reading Long Way Down by Nick Hornby, which is full of real stories about real people.
I don't watch a great deal of television but I never miss House. In fact, my life is on hold until series six comes out.
Do I listen to the radio? It's usually on in the background. I might catch Jonathan Ross' morning show on Radio 2 on a Saturday or Dermot O'Leary in the afternoon.
I don't go to too many gigs but we did go to the theatre recently. To be honest I was dragged by the wife and daughter to see Mamma Mia. That said, actually, it was rather good.
Have to be honest, I don't go to the cinema much either. The last film I saw was Fantastic Mr Fox with my son. I found it quite odd and he slept through it.
As a family we often go to a place near Braintree called the Discovery Centre. Adults can have a nice brisk walk and the kids can run riot on the random pieces of play equipment scattered about.
Also, it's only 15 minutes away from A&E.
My favourite restaurant is a place called The Blue Strawberry in nearby village Hatfield Peverel.
If I order a takeaway I'll tend to go for chicken tikka jalfrezi with Bombay aloo and an onion bhaji.
Do I keep fit? No. I make a point of doing virtually nothing as often as I can.
My idea of a perfect weekend would include spending time with the family, of course. Maybe catching up with a few friends, good food and wine, a game of golf and a bit of Scrabble.

Nik Kershaw's solo acoustic tour, during which he will be playing old and new material, comes to the Rescue Rooms on Thursday, February 18, starting at 7.30pm. Opening the show will be Isle of Wight singer songwriter Martin Newnham. Tickets are £16 in advance from the venue or by calling 0871 310 0000. Expect to pay more on the door.