I’m having trouble uploading any photos at the moment, something to do with a brand new year upsetting some software – technology ain’t as advanced as we think sometimes. Hopefully will be fixed soon.

We are hoping to be able to share some exciting film news in a couple of weeks, it’s amazing how long these things take to see the light of day but hopefully it will be worth the frustrating wait.

Fianlly, rumour has it Alfie Boe will go top ten Sunday night and Gold. Took the record we did with Katherine Jenkins several months to sell that well. Watch this space!

Along with every other (disorganised) self-employed person, I am currently in a very dark place I call,

Tax Hell.

No amount of Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir and pretty vista can reach me here. The wine would provide some limited comfort but sadly we are supposed to be on a detox/health kick. Why we always feel the need to deny ourselves during the coldest, darkest month of the year and during the inevitable month of tax hell I don’t know, but we do it year in year out anyway. Surely tax should be done in July with the sun shining. How much nicer to ban the booze in a month of sun and outdoors activity rather than during a month spent sitting inside, keeping warm with it dark by 4 o’clock and that’s if you’re lucky enough for it to have got light in the first place.

Clearly I could never live in Scandinavia or maybe I’m just suffering from post holiday blues.

One glimmer of sun in the otherwise darkened sky is how well Alfie Boe’s album Bring Him Home is doing in the charts. Thanks to anyone out there who bought it- I hope you are enjoying it.

On another note entirely, if anybody missed the Today programme yesterday and needs a good laugh, have a listen to James Naughtie at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjH4arIn-80

I can’t decide whether it’s his unfortunate slip of the tongue that’s so funny or his feeble attempts to continue without laughing!

I'm a laydee!

Well I’m back from spending 24 hours in Prague holed up in a studio. Or maybe I wasn’t in Prague at all. Maybe Alfie and James were involved in a complex prank and I’ve actually spent 24 hours in a studio in Bognor. Whatever, Alfie was true to form, sang fantastically well and we have now recorded all of his album.  James is back in Copenhagen finishing mixing tracks to send over to me for my input from our studio in London – thank goodness for modern technology. It’s mastering on Friday so we’re nearly there. James is staying out in Copenhagen for a big televised Christmas show that he’s conducting.

Hope you like the picture with Alfie Boe and Matt Lucas who are also singing a duet together on his album. Not only is he seriously funny, he can actually sing too!

James and I also clean forgot about the track we did on the new Gracie Field’s album with Jane Horrocks. Apparently it entered the album charts at 31 a couple of weeks ago which ain’t a bad result. We didn’t get any points on the record so sales make little difference to us but it’s still nice if it does reasonably well. It was a strange day though:

Jane brought her own vocal coach who just kept telling her to sing it ‘like Judy’ and we were asked by her manager to lay on lunch so I spent a fortune at the local deli rather than Tesco’s (which she might have taken the wrong way as she does their adverts). When lunchtime came though, she had brought her own flask of soup which she had while we ate all the fancy stuff. It takes a mind of steel to resist a good pork pie so I was most impressed.

They’ve decided now they have heard all the ‘real’ opera voices dubbed over the actors, that they might want to dub Julian Ovenden as well. He did a great job and is a very good singer but he might not sound like an opera singer next to Sally Matthews in the duet from Cosi.

I’m very impressed he was so convincing. We’ve asked our old friend, Alfie Boe, to have a go at being his voice which we hope will be a good match if they do feel all the actors should be dubbed. He is in rehearsal at ENO at the moment so hopefully he will be able to nip over to the studio sometime next week. The other news is they might be changing the name to Sizzle – the thinking is one word titles are stronger apparently…

I’ve madly practising the Rossini’s Stabat Mater for my concert in Bedford in a couple of weeks. It’s great fun to sing, very dramatic and over the top; more like an opera than an oratorio really. I’ve just found out that the tenor Bonaventura Bottone and his daughter are 2 of the other soloists which is a plus as James worked with him years ago at the Coliseum and said he was a fabulous tenor and one of the nicest people there. It must be lovely to do a concert with your daughter although he has his work cut out with the hardest aria in the piece – never-ending top notes which James reckons he will find a doddle!