Back to the subject in hand. I still hadn’t memorised all of the words when the car came to take me to the studio and was feeling absolutely exhausted, as for some reason known only to Seth, he decided to stay awake for a large portion of the night and felt very strongly that I should join him in his nocturnal activities.

Meatloaf was delighted to see me –he is almost like a rather over-grown puppy; more Rottweiler than Cocker Spaniel though. I discovered that I knew a few of the violinists in the orchestra which was nice, and the rehearsal went okay except the sound wasn’t great –I couldn’t really hear myself at all but they promised to turn me up. I was amazed to have a small choir behind me and they even had 4 string players on stage although it must have been a bit galling for the orchestra to be playing in the ‘pit’ whilst 4 very  young and very good looking people play along with them in shot!

I’m still not entirely sure why they chose an interior designer as a judge on the programme but Mr Lewellyn Bowen seemed like a very nice bloke and gave me a lovely candle that I presume he designed. It was also nice to see Alan Titchmarsh again and I was very touched he remembered me from when I sang on the pilot for his talk show. I was treated very well as the guest opera singer and felt great trying on lots of designer dresses and having my hair and make-up done. I can tell you from everything I saw backstage that there has been a LOT of money spent on this show.  They kept asking what kind of look I wanted:

“The kind that hides the fact I’ve had 3 hours sleep!”

So I would tell you about the performance but you can see that on youtube somewhere no doubt. Meatloaf was larger than life, as expected, and has SO much energy especially when you think he is a man of 62.  All in all a fun experience and they decided to pre-record my slot at 8:45 just before the show went out. So I had the even more surreal experience of getting home just in time to watch myself on the box with Anna and James. How weird is that?