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?

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