Victoria Gray

July 2014

IT was always meant to be a bit of a giggle; a chance to taste fame, make a few quid and have fun.

But when Bilsthorpe’s Victoria Gray now looks back on the two years with Amore, a classical crossover - or ‘popera’ - group based in London, she knows that her heart lay elsewhere.

“It was great fun, don’t get me wrong,” says the 27-year-old, who now lives in Burton Joyce with her fiance.

“But that showbiz world wasn’t really me. There was a thing I used to call Meerkat syndrome that people used to do at celebrity parties. You’d be talking to them and they’d be constantly bobbing up and down and looking around the room for celebrities.

“I’d couldn’t wait to get back home and get in my onesie,” she adds with a laugh.

Amore were four members of the Royal College of Music, from where Victoria graduated with an MA in Performance, the end of eight years of study.

Her plan was always to be an opera singer but the opportunity for a bit of fun and possible fame came along when they were signed to major record label, Universal.

Highlights over the past two years include performing on a boat on the Thames in front of the Queen as part of her Diamond Jubilee celebrations and singing Abide With Me and the National Anthem at last year’s FA Cup Final between Manchester City and Wigan Athletic, where 82,000 people packed out Wembley Stadium.

Amore also opened shows for Katherine Jenkins and Russell Watson, two of the biggest classical crossover artist in the UK. There has been modelling for GC Watches, that included a starring role in a TV campaign.

“I’m still doing that,” says Victoria.

And various celebrity parties.

“We did a lot with Samuel L Jackson, performing at his events. They were the best parties. He loved classical music and we’d sing before dinner, then join everyone else for the meal. We were on a table with comedian Stephen K Amos at one of them and he was hilarious. And Ron Weasley was on the next table.

“Will Smith was a lovely guy. We did a lot for a charity called WellChild, which is one the Prince Harry’s main charities. We performed at the annual Helping Hands Ball which was star-studded.”

She adds: “I found that the loveliest people were the genuinely talented ones. The reality TV stars were the ones with an ego and attitude.”

All four members of Amore disbanded the group this year to work on solo projects.

“We missed opera and being part of a production,” says Victoria who moved back to Nottinghamshire six months ago with fiance Sam Ogrizovic, the Kimberley Cricket Club captain. The couple will tie the knot in September.

“I haven’t missed London once,” she admits.

Her focus now is to train with the English National Opera, but she needs to raise £2,000 to do so.

“You work with the best directors and conductors; it’s really exciting.

“I was worried that being from the crossover world they wouldn’t take me seriously because they are two very different worlds. All of us in Amore went into it quite naively thinking we could straddle both worlds but it became increasingly impossible when we had a record company who wanted us to sing songs out of our comfort zone.”

She means mainstream songs given the opera treatment.

She will be doing a few of them as part of her first solo concert tomorrow night, mixed in with more authentic opera songs.

“It’s more nerve-wracking than the FA Cup Final,” she says of the concert at Samworth Church Academy in Mansfield.

“Although there were so many people in Wembley Stadium, you couldn’t see their faces. But singing to people you know, sat right in front of you, is really hard.”

The venue is where Mansfield girls’ choir Cantamus used to rehearse. Victoria joined while still at school and sang with them all over the world.

Another was Lucy Kay, the Notts-raised runner up of this year’s Britain’s Got Talent.

“She’s a lovely girl and she’s done so well,” says Victoria.

“I saw her a couple of weeks ago and we sang together.”

That was at the memorial concert in Mansfield for Cantamus founder Pamela Cook, who died last year.

“I told her that if she needed any advice about the celebrity world then I was there for her. Because it is a shock to the system. It’s not for the faint-hearted. It can be quite brutal.”

She describes the concert as “incredible night.

Says Victoria: “Imagine 400 girls singing Raise Me Up together. It gives me goosebumps thinking about it now.

“Miss Cook was the biggest musical inspiration in my life. I still miss her every day.”

Her long-term ambitions are to sing on all the major opera stages around the world and it’s a journey she’s excited about embarking on once again.

“I want to be part of that buzz again; being part of a production and watching it go from an idea to the stage.

“Amore was amazing. I had two years doing things I never thought I’d do. But now I feel like I’m home and doing the thing I first fell in love with.”

Victoria Gray presents Summer Serenades at Samworth Church Academy in Mansfield tomorrow from 6pm, with guest Natalie Montakhab. Tickets are £12, call 01623 822567 or email maggie.magent@btinternet.com.   

Mathew Horne

April 2013

WHEN the lead actress pulled out with just four days to go until filming was due to start, Mathew Horne suggested the director should call an old friend of his.
But this wasn’t just anyone.
“I said to him ‘why don’t you ask Kylie?’ and he laughed and said ‘as if!” recalls Horne.
“So I just rang her up and said ‘look, I’m doing this film and there’s a part for you in it. I know you’re busy...’
“She’s often quite busy,” he adds with a laugh.
The international pop star, who Horne has worked with half-a-dozen times in the past, was in Berlin at the time and scheduled to fly home to perform at Sydney’s New Year’s Eve celebrations.
“It was in the hands of fate really because she had just three days free and they happened to be when we were filming. It worked out perfectly. And I can’t imagine anyone else doing that part now.”
It was for Hey Diddly Dee, a one-hour drama for Sky Arts as part a new season of Playhouse Presents.
The likes of Anna Friel, Matt Smith, Idris Elba, Johnny Vegas, Kathy Burke, Suranne Jones, and Vanessa Redgrave are appearing throughout the ten-week run, which begins on Thursday with Hey Diddly Dee.
Joining Horne and Minogue are Peter Serafinowicz, David Harewood, Lee Boardman and Trent Poly alumni Paul Kaye.
“It’s about an amateur theatre group who are putting on a really bad show about Andy Warhol, played by Peter Serafinowicz,” says Horne.
“He’s like a grand dame who has fallen from grace so he’s quite bitter and aggressive. He’s having an on-off relationship with Kylie’s character. And I play his understudy who ends up usurping him, although Kylie’s character tries to scupper me.
“It’s a strange, irreverent, retro piece.”
Horne, who first got into acting while at the Minster School in Southwell, worked with the writer and director Marc Warren on the Boy George drama, Worried About The Boy, playing Culture Club drummer Jon Moss, so he knew a lot of the crew but it was his first meeting with Kaye and Serafinowicz.
Kylie he’s known for years, since he and Gavin & Stacey co-star James Corden presented the Brit Awards with her in 2009. The same year she appeared in their BBC3 sketch show Horne & Corden.
The boy from Burton Joyce now classes the pop icon as a friend.
“It’s kind of a strange old friendship that I don’t like to think about too much, because it’s too weird,” he laughs.
The pair do socialise when time allows it and he will go and see her in concert, even though he’s more a fan of indie guitar bands.
“She gets me over to Paris and places to see her shows.
“And because we’ve worked together quite a bit, she trusts my judgment. She listens to me, which is great,” he laughs. “I think something like this is good for her because she can spend a few days not being Kylie. She’s part of a team of people making something together, mucking in and getting on with it.
“I think she quite likes that. And it takes the pressure off for a few days. When I’m watching her on set, she’s very low key, she’s no bother, she’ll get involved, she’s mucking in... and I think she likes it not being all about Kylie Minogue.”
This week he’s been filming a second series of BBC3 comedy Bad Education, with star and co-writer Jack Whitehall.
“The kids are keeping the energy up but they do make me feel like an old man,” says Horne, who plays headmaster Fraser.
Filming is in a studio in Wimbledon, in contrast to the first series.
“We were under the Heathrow flightpath for that, which caused us a few problems. We had about 13 seconds of silence before another plane came over.”
Working with Whitehall, an arena status comedian, hasn’t re-ignited Horne’s passion for stand-up comedy, which he started doing after leaving Manchester University, from where he graduated with a drama degree.
“I don’t have any desire to be a stand-up any more,” he insists.
Horne and fellow graduate Bruce McKinnon toured as a double act for three years and played Nottingham’s Just The Tonic when it was based at the Old Vic in Fletcher Gate.
When Catherine Tate saw the act at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2001, it kickstarted Horne’s acting career.
He joined the cast of her sketch show as (“Am I bovvered?”) Lauren’s boyfriend and the grandson of Tate’s foul-mouthed pensioner. Fans of the show included Liam Gallagher, Richard E. Grant and Robbie Williams, who once shouted “Am I bovvered?” at him from his car in a London street.
After appearing in Teachers, Horne became a household name with the BAFTA-winning Gavin & Stacey.
“However ubiquitous Gavin & Stacey is, it’s been four years since we did it,” he says of his biggest role.
“I don’t think people will ever stop asking if we are going to do more until we do some more. Then they’ll go ‘oh I wish you hadn’t done that, you ruined it’,” he laughs.
But he then adds: “We may well do it and I’d love to but it’s got to be right.”
After the sketch show, Horne & Corden, and his and Corden’s film debut Lesbian Vampire Killers (he’s since returned to the big screen in Horrid Henry: The Movie), Horne has been working a lot in theatre, appearing in Entertaining Mr Sloane and Charley’s Aunt.
“I’m weighing up a few more options because I really want to get back into the theatre,” he says.
Horne still lives in London but there is no girlfriend. Not even a cat.
“I’m not allowed pets and I shouldn’t be allowed girlfriends,” he laughs.
He returns to Nottingham to see his parents, a retired lace factory boss and a nursery nurse, for family birthdays and for gigs at Rock City.
“I haven’t been back since Christmas,” he admits, although he plans to visit for the Dot to Dot festival in May.
Horne is a big music fan and runs a club night in Shoreditch.
“I packed in the DJing because I got fed up with the late nights. I am 34 now, Simon. But I still love music. I’m loving the new Suede album. I saw them at the Barfly recently and they were just brilliant. And the Foals album is great. There’s so much good stuff around at the moment.”
He meets up with fellow Nottingham actor Vicky McClure, currently appearing in ITV drama Broadchurch, when he’s home.
“Our paths do cross quite a bit in London but because Vicky’s moved back to Nottingham now, I tend to hook up with her for a drink when I go back. We go down the Social (now The Bodega) and have a drink. It’s quite funny because people say ‘what are you two doing hanging out together?’”
He adds: “I like catching up with her, she’s great.”
This year he’s appeared in Miss Marple and Death In Paradise, which was filmed on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe (“It was like one day on set and three days off, on the beach, for two weeks – I got a bit of stick for that”). Now he wants to concentrate on theatre and working with his own production company.
“I want to get into writing some stuff myself. And there are a few projects I’m developing as producer.”
He adds: “It’s all good. I’m getting older... and less wise.”
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Playhouse Presents Hey Diddly Dee is on Sky Arts 1 on Thursday at 9pm.