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!

Brighton Dome

For those of you who used to read my diary on the website, you may remember that James and I did an arrangement of O Holy Night for a concert he conducted in Denmark last year. It was a duet featuring Michael Bolton and Katherine Jenkins. Not the most likely of combinations but it turns out that both have an album out at the moment and both have included our arrangement on their CD so can’t complain.

I’m singing it myself on Sunday with  the RPO in the Brighton Dome; Not that I have done any practice this last week with the horrible cold virus having hit our household. Thank goodness it’s all repertoire I know or I’d be fighting back the rising panic with a concert looming at the weekend and no voice to speak of yet.

Twins bloods were much easier on Monday with an amazing nurse finding a vein in Arthur’s foot so imagine my annoyance when GOSH phoned this morning to say they were very sorry but their tests somehow got lost so we need to come back in for more bloods. Poor old Arthur.

Speaking of money, we received our PRS statement today which is always exciting as you earn extra money you didn’t bargain for and also find out where your music has ended up. The money you earn is from your work being played and can be anything from a few pence to several thousand pounds (if you are Mark Ronson!).

SO:

• £360 from South Africa for The Kumars at no.42
• 7p (yes pence) from a juke box playing a Katherine Jenkins track
• £12.50 for a comedy pilot in Japan
• £12.61 for me singing the Habanera under adverts on Channel 4 for repeat Friends episodes

Not sure which of those is the weirdest way of earning a living. Surely a comedy about an Indian family set in England won’t be funny in South Africa and how on earth does Carmen sits under Friends???

So I got the call on Thursday saying Meatloaf wants to duet with an opera singer. Mad idea but a great way of raising my profile quite apart from the fact that I remember Meatloaf dominating the charts when I was a kid. He is a legend and what a thing to be able to say:

“I sang Bat out of Hell as a duet with Meatloaf”

They wanted to send a car straightaway but first I had to take both the boys to Kings for their regular bloods which can’t be missed as their levels have to be closely monitored. (As it happened we just got the results and Arthur’s medication has had to be increased so it was absolutely the right call not to delay them).

As soon as I got back from the hospital they whisked me to the studios for a rehearsal with Meatloaf. I met the musical director and asked for some music but he only had a lyric sheet for me. So this is Rock’n Roll – no music! I’m afraid us classically trained singers need dots to read so I was slightly on edge to start with. Meatloaf, however was charming, a real gent. I don’t know what I was expecting! But he was lovely, interesting, modest and normal – you wouldn’t know that he had sold millions of records.  Well, it’s hard to forget that actually but you know what I mean. Yes, there were a certain number of expletives but not as many as I had expected – apart from when his filling fell out… He offered it to the producer of the show to sell on ebay, she declined but I wonder how much it would have fetched?

Anyway, we worked out which bits I was going to sing and I sorted out some ideas for harmonies and that was that. Meatloaf had to go off to the dentist for his emergency appointment.

Young Seth kept me up most of the night as he has a horrid cold then I spent most of Friday morning carrying him around whilst desperately trying to learn the words to Bat out of Hell. What a lot of words and I must be one of the few people of my generation not to know them!

Run out of time, more soon…

It’s also strange that there is only one judge on the panel who has ever sung in a professional opera. Katherine Jenkins has recorded some mezzo arias but Meatloaf clearly knows nothing of classical vocal technique and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen may look very arty and 18th century but since when has long wavy hair qualified you to be an opera critic? – actually don’t answer that. At least the judges on X factor are qualified to talk about pop singing and ditto the judges on Strictly Come Dancing…

Still, I’m probably missing the point of the show – I guess it’s not aimed at me!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2010/jan/14/popstar-to-opera-star

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/opera/article6997143.ece