I am swanning around in my robe this morning feeling very like someone from a Noel Coward play. There is debris from a post-show drinks party all around me and my biggest concern is saving my voice for this evening's show. Oh, and I must do a photo shoot later, darlings.
Last night was my first night of my second week season at Feinsten's and it went really well. It was a really great audience and the show was tighter and I felt really happy with it. The new song went almost really well, aside from a little lyric blip on my part, but hey, that's live theatre. We also realised when we got to the song What More Can I Say, that we hadn't rehearsed it earlier in the day!! So that made for an exciting few minutes.
It's actually really amazing to me to be writing about last night and these things that went wrong and to not have totally freaked out about them. It's only about a year and a half since I first did I Bought A Blue Car Today for the first time and I am so happy that I have been able to overcome a lot of fears and to be this relaxed about performing in this way. Of course, relaxation is the key: if you're not relaxed you won't enjoy it and the audience will enjoy it less too. But I've come a long, long way. I used to get so utterly nauseated at the prospect of having to sing in public, or even to stand up and make a speech or to try and be funny at some event. If I had rehearsed and was prepared in the way I was used to in terms of being in a play or a musical then I felt ok, but mostly galas and cabaret sort of shows have only a soundcheck and then you're on. I would have missed out on so many great experiences, last night being one of them, had I not persevered, felt the fear and done it anyway, and started my new career as a crooner!
The trailer for Sir Billi the Vet, the animated film I did with Sean Connery can be seen here. It's even more insane than I remember it. And if you go to the website's music section you can hear a snatch of the theme song sung by Shirley Bassey, who, incidentally, was the person I first heard singing the new song, Almost There, that I put into my show at Feinstein's last night!! Woah!
And the BBC has announced the line-up for the next season of Who Do You Think You Are?, the genealogy show, and I am one of the particpants along with Bruce Forsyth, Rupert Everett, Jason Donovan, Alaxander Armstrong, Hugh Quarshie, Rupert Penry-Jones, Dervla Kirwan, and Monty Don. Episodes start airing in July, but I go off and film the second instalment of my story next week so I am not sure when mine will air. But it is a doozy, let me tell you! I have already found out some pretty astonishing things.
This picture was taken by photographer Andrew Montgomery in a graveyard at the back of St Pancras station in London a few weeks ago when I was filming the first part of Who Do You Think You Are?.