A Musical Theatre Fish out of Water

The incredible cast of Top Hat at The Alydwch Theatre

Twice this week I’ve felt out of place and left in awe of people in my profession; once at an audition and the other at a performance of Top Hat in the West End where the divine dancers left me feeling like a lump of lard, jealous and amazed by their effortless skill.  It is that icky feeling where you feel your eyes inadvertently start widening and your heart sinking as the bad voice in your head starts listing everything that’s wrong with you.

Wednesday saw me at a casting for a new TV programme where they were looking for physical theatre performers.  I can hear your guffaws through cyber space at the thought of me embracing my inner LeCoq (Google it for those of you who think I’m being lewd) but I gave it a go as unemployed Thesps can’t be picky.

The icky feeling first appeared in the waiting room as I scanned my fellow auditionees.  There were none of the usual suspects, whose familiar faces are strangely comforting despite everyone looking similar and up for the same role, no, these faces were all new to me.  Gone were the blonde heads of highlights, under-nourished forms and definitely not a sign of fake tan.  Usually at a dance audition my tinted moisturiser, mascara and lip balm leave me looking as if I’ve just rolled out of the nearest bush next to the false lashes, war paint and hair extensions; but at this casting I looked like Jordan (minus the DD’s of course!)  Bare-faces, long Pre-Raphaelite curls and a loose trouser was the trend; I was a musical theatre fish out of water.

I have previously only been privy to physical theatre at drama school where the first year is spent contorting your body into various states.  I spent a good 15 minutes of life as condensation dripping down a studio wall and my ex-classmates and I still joke about our ability to transform into neon light and dart around.  I was a koala, part of Noah’s ark (probably a bit of timber or the rudder) and some symbolic part of a Greek ritual that involved water and moaning.

DV8 Theatre Company

Despite my condensation capabilities I was thrust into the world of musical theatre where loose hamstrings are preferable to loose spines and it is all about the “Broadway Face.”  We work to counts, under direction and in control so could there be some inner wiggly, floppy actor still lurking behind the jazz hands?

Apparently the puppetry skills I acquired on Avenue Q were the reason I was called in for this casting.  I am not sure that running around with my dear puppets on my right arm whilst singing in twang and occasionally swishing my hair truly qualified me, but who I am to argue with a casting director?

Once inside the audition we did a fairly relaxed workshop incorporating lots of drama games that I make my poor teaching kids do.  Everybody was so imaginative and I felt positively dull and envious of their natural spontaneity.  I love to mess about with my nephew and become an elephant or nee-nah driver with ease but when asked to mime an object in a big circle of actors I was self-conscious and stumped!

The experience taught me that I need to stop being so rigid in my mind and seeing those incredible dancers in Top Hat inspires me to work harder.  Our skills in performing only look that effortless or spontaneous as a result of serious graft and dedication.  I think it is sometimes beneficial to find yourself out of comfort zone, what’s that phrase.........?

Of course doing some physical theatre back-flips or tap dancing like Fred Astaire in my kitchen will probably be so awful that it’ll be a good thing that no-one is watching but it can only be a positive step in any aspect of our lives to drop inhibitions and just go for it.

Oh, and after all that self doubt and moaning, I got a bloomin’ recall!  So I am off to don my baggy trousers and roll about my kitchen floor.....!

The new X Factor course - fast tracking to fame

“When will I, will I be famous?”sang Bros in the 80s, well the answer could now be in 17 weeks at the price of only £95.

Bishop Auckland College, County Durham are to offer a new course aimed at giving young people the confidence and skills to audition successfully for the ITV talent show X factor and other similar TV programmes.

I read this yesterday and shuddered with horror and my short comment on Twitter, along the lines of “God Help Us All,” caused much ‘re-tweeting’ from fellow industry folk and led me to be asked to comment on BBC Radio 5 Live.

So why should a new course stir up such controversy within the theatre industry? 

I have always had a fairly negative view of reality TV. Long gone are the light-hearted programmes such as Opportunity Knocks and the last 13 years have seen an explosion in reality TV shows and audience voting from their sofas for the next star.  Those who don’t win the record deal then turn up in the West End or on Number 1 UK Tours leaving legitimately trained performers to understudy the stamina-challenging 8 shows a week.  Appearing on television has become a valid and often preferred route to lead roles and record deals.  Why learn your craft at a drama school or graft for years when you can create a ready-made fan base and the ‘bums-on-seats’ appeal that producers long for?

To me, this new course exploits this quick route to fame by offering an even quicker route to success.  I have nothing against new courses or training for the Performing Arts, despite it being an over-saturated industry, but I am wary of the motivation and marketing behind this particular course at Bishop Auckland College.  It feeds upon society’s desire for 15 minutes of fame and the immediacy in which they want it.  I teach children who say to me, at a scarily young age, that when they grow up they want to be famous, when I ask “why?” they just say “because.” 

If the Performing Arts is the area a young person wishes to work in, then brilliant, but we should be training individuals to excel in their chosen field through dedication and detail.  If I were to plan a career change I wouldn’t dream of learning to be an accountant once a week for 4 months and expect to fully understand the skill and nuances involved to do the job well.  The problem with seeing people rise to success via the television is that it appears easy.  I am not so ignorant as to claim that the skills required to be a performer can be likened to that of a doctor or a scientist, but nonetheless, there is a skill-set that cannot be taught to just anyone and being a performer is not easy.

You can learn all the singing technique and confidence on offer but raw talent and star quality cannot be taught.  This seemed to be the ethos behind the X Factor; an indefinable star quality that makes someone watchable.  A 17 week course cannot teach somebody that.

I cannot disregard the positive effects such programmes have had on the theatre industry within UK; I recognise that they have opened up the theatre to a new type of audience and revenue has risen.  Many of these reality stars who succeed from this initial spring board do have immense talent and graft very hard to retain their positions, just look at Samantha Barks.  Every type of performer has a place within the entertainment industry from Adele who excels in her craft to Jedward who.......well, they do what they do because people voted for them. I do not judge the participants at all, they are wisely taking the option society offers them and moving with the times.

Head of Arts, Music and Performing Arts at Bishop Auckland, Mike Jinks, actually seems to have some good motivation behind the new course

"The course is also about giving people real, transferable skills. The biggest thing they will get out of it is confidence, whether this is for a future singing audition or a job interview." 
 

In a world of I-pads, computer games and poking on Facebook any social and communication skills we can teach young people is highly valid, but Mike Jinks adds,

People auditioning also need to know that the ones who succeed on X Factor don't just walk in there blind. It's not about just wandering in, singing a song and you're famous,"

No, it’s about courting the media and letting the production team say you used to work in a call centre despite you completing a preparation course such as this.  Elements of this course may benefit applicants but the message that it’s aimed at X Factor success is the problem.  Should people aspire to win X-Factor, a short cut to the fame, whilst others achieve it through more traditional methods?  Or is it “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality?  This seems to be the way that enterainment industry is going so are you silly not to benefit from the only chance you may have to achieve your dreams?

The media around this course just makes the actress in me sad; sad that TV reality searches have such a place in society that these courses have become relevant and sad that aspiring performers don’t seem to want to succeed as a jobbing actor but be catapulted towards stardom.  Many of my contemporaries and I became actors because we loved and respected the craft of Sir John Gielgud, Bernadette Peters and Nat King Cole and whilst the success of One Direction and Olly Murs is undoubtedly admirable, it is not the dream I dreamed.

This post was originally written for www.thehuffingtonpost.co.uk

The Les Mis Movie - Dreaming the Dream

I don’t think we can ever complain again that musicals are just for the cultural elite; with Mamma Mia! Chicago, Nine and now Les Miserables going celluloid there can’t be many people left who haven’t heard of musical theatre.

The amount of press surrounding the opening of the Les Mis movie this week has been impressive; constant interviews, features, live screenings of the premiere and did you know the actors sang live???  The world has Les Mis fever,  (which if I were to be historically correct would be cholera, so hopefully we haven’t!)  As a former “Miserable” myself I am of course thrilled and excited to see the story close to my heart on the big screen but there is also a tiny part of me that squeaks “ Ah but it was ours and now everyone has a piece of it.”

Ask any performer and they will tell you that their love affair with the Boublil & Schonberg musical began at a young age.  In the press interviews for the movie we learnt that Eddie Redmayne sang along to the soundtrack in the car as a child and both Amanda Seyfried and Hugh Jackman have loved it for years. 

I, too, have a long and personal affection for Les Miserables.  My grandparents took me to see it when I was barely 10 years old and I must have been a further 4 times before appearing in it myself at 23.  I vividly remember the effects of the Revolve and swirls onstage in (SPOILER ALERT non movie see-ers) Javert’s suicide from the Dress Circle.  My next memory is seeing a boy band member from North & South (do you remember them?  See, Sir Cameron was “celeb” casting back in the 90s) giggling during the barricade scene.  Sitting a few rows from the front I was aghast that any could giggle when (SPOILER ALERT 2 ) Eponine had just died and remind me that this world wasn’t real.  If only I had remembered that on a 2 show day myself years later.

Now this is an embarrassing fact should any fellow Thesps that may read this, but at 16 years old I partook in one of those workshops.  Yes, I and 30 other amateurs paid silly money to spend 3 days at Pineapple Studios rehearsing sections to perform on stage at The Palace Theatre.  Oh my goodness I loved it, I was in heaven!  Meeting cast members and singing the songs I had only previously sang in my bedroom; it was a young aspiring Les Mizzers dream!

I was then lucky enough to “dream the dream nightly,” 2 year long contracts at The Queen’s Theatre in 2004 and then in 2009 and my 8 year old self was content.  It really is a dream show to do; countless characters to play each night, a costume plot that’s faster and more complicated than your on-stage plot and long wigs covered in fake grease!  It was a shock coming from the sunny Greek beach in Mamma Mia! where you were given highlights and fake tan to the disease-ridden streets of Paris where you were handed rags and a packet of baby wipes. 

Les Miserables should be sponsored by baby wipes; you must use a pack a week scrubbing off dirt/whore make up/more dirt/Paris dirt/more dirt.  My pores were stuffed with enough brown pan stick to make a beautician gasp through the magnifying mirror during a facial.

Audience members also think that the cast are a bunch of obese heifers as the musical begins, but that is because we are wearing our first 5 costumes one on top of the other.  If you think the camera adds 10 pounds Anne Hathaway, think of us poor on stage lot! 

Like any job you have the highs and lows; the high of performing for HRH The Queen at Windsor Castle and having your picture in Hello! Magazine, (no higher accolade according to my dear Nannie Julie) and the low of performing in ridiculous heat under layers of wool in your underground dressing room with no natural light or air.  There was a power cut one night in the backstage areas of the theatre but because front of house was fine the performance went ahead.  So the audience sat enjoying this classic as we bumped around in pitch black, bashing heads, crying and applying dirt by the light of a camping lamp.  Oh the glamour of the West End!

Les Mis is 27 years old and so has alumni to rival any other show; it’s like The Bill of the musical theatre world; everyone has been in it at some point in their careers!  At the risk of sounding ‘wanky’ it is a family that welcomes you back in, even after you have departed the barricades through a haze of last night tears clutching your stolen bounty of whore gloves and Tricolore badges.  I have been lucky enough to be invited back for 25^th Anniversary concert at The O2 in 2010 and more recently to audition (but not get) the film, although I did have 3 glorious recording sessions at Shepperton Studios singing for the soundtrack.  It never gets boring to sing that incredible music and to be able to do it with huge orchestras or wearing headphones in a studio watching clips of the film under the direction of the enigmatic Stephen Brooker, is both a guilty pleasure and an honour.

For me, Les Miserables is like a first love; that first relationship that teaches you all and nothing about love but remains in your heart throughout all future relationships.  A love that defines you and always comes back to haunt you.

 “Do you hear the people sing?  Lost in the valley of the night,” well, I always will hear that music in some shape or form because the 8 year old girl inside me who dreamt of being Eponine will never get over her first love!

A Dry New Year - alcohol concerns of mine

 Happy New Year!  My Twitter feed is full of diet ideas and people solemnly swearing to start lunging everyday but there is one recurring theme; donation pleas for #DryJanuary.

Dry January is a new initiative to raise money for Drink Aware and Alcohol Concern by encouraging people to give up booze for the 31 days of January 2013.  Now I am all for raising money for charity and think only good can come from shining a light on alcohol issues but these Twitter pleas fall flat with me.

 It shouldn’t be that noteworthy to abstain from alcohol for 31 days; has society become so defined by the ‘binge drink’ that it is a struggle to go without it for 8.3% of the year?  An impressive accomplishment for charity is running 26.2 miles, trekking a jungle or growing a wispy moustache mid-puberty for male cancers.  Should I be asking for sponsorship every time I give up chocolate or biting my nails?
This campaign reminded me of a sponsored 24 hour fast my sister and I did when at school in the Ethiopian Famine supporting 1980s.  Like all campaigns it had the noble aim of educating us and raising funds.  We awoke with the best intentions on the Saturday morning but then did 3 hours of dance classes and in a light-headed state of panic begged our Dad to take us to the nearest newsagents for a packet of Skips.  We learnt more about the plight of the Ethiopians at that time by watching Newsround not by getting hungry.  I think we still sent off our sponsorship money though.

Perhaps it is called “Dry” January because our bank balances are arid deserts post Christmas and only dowsing will find an elusive £5 to sponsor a mate to cleanse their liver.  Any oases of cash are sadly being put towards my tax but I will always actively support anyone who wishes to cut down on or cut out alcohol.

I know many people whose lives are infinitely better sans booze and they made that decision quietly and without asking us for cash.  I am not against the ethos of Dry January more the constant “Day 3, phewf this is hard I could murder a pint,” outbursts through social media.  I can only imagine how emotional and desperate these tweets may become by day 20 – “Day 11, it’s Friday, home alone whilst work colleagues are having the post work drink, I’m eating the wallpaper,” “Day 20 one smiley Grandma for sale, 75% discount with a bottle of Pinot.”

Judging by the photographs gracing the newspapers on New Year’s Day to abstain from booze for a month should be a no-brainer.  The mini-skirts laced with vomit and blood-stained faces were like remnants of the Apocalypse where only football hooligans on a free all-inclusive holiday in Falaraki survived.

I would compel anyone who wishes to raise awareness for Alcohol Concern to attend an Al-Anon meeting and see the effects of alcohol abuse on the families and loved ones of alcoholics.  An alcoholic isn’t just someone who drinks as soon as they wake up, alcoholism comes in many, surprising forms and one hour of your time would be much more effective than jump starting your weight-loss with a Media led campaign.

So yes, please do clean up for a month and take a moment to consider alcohol consumption but don’t ask me to pat you on the back for surviving 31 days without a drink because I sure as hell won’t pat you on the back when you down 31 glasses of wine on February 1^st.

 

THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY FOR WWW.THEHUFFINGTONPOST.CO.UK

In case you want to do it - www.dryjanuary.org.uk

www.al-anonuk.org.uk

 

Merry Christmas from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

Isn’t this the best Christmas present?  2012 has been the year for unadulterated love of being British proudly stamping it with endless bunting.  We have pomped our way through the Diamond Jubilee, cried and cheered during the Olympics and adored the Queen for jumping out of a plane with James Bond.  Just as we were starting to get a bit depressed about vile journalism, horrified at Savile investigations and appalled by government Arts cuts or indeed the government in general, the Royal Family swoop back in and recover our patriotic spirit.

Kate is pregnant!!  Kate and Wills are gonna be parents!

Sorry...The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting a future monarch of England.  But they’re just so accessible and smiley that you feel that we can still call them Wills and Kate!

 

I have to admit I have spent much of 2012 wishing I could be more like Kate.  When you are the same age as somebody you cannot help but draw comparisons between your lives (Beyonce is also the same age as me but I had to give up those comparisons as the results left me feeling lardy and depressed at my lack of brilliant booty skills!)  But Kate seems to embody everything that we aspire to be; fabulous hair, ability to rock a winter coat and now she’s happily married with a little one on the way.  Give me Kate over Pippa’s bum and her questionable authorship skills any day.

Judging by the deluge of articles about morning sickness since Monday we can safely say that Kate’s pregnancy will be under scrutiny.  Do we really need to know “I had morning sickness too,” “I’ve been through what Kate’s going through,” “Is it twins?” because 9 months is a long time to read waffle.  Kate’s high-street chain wearing accessible-ness, plus the fact that she is baking a future King or Queen, means we have a vested interest in her pregnancy.  We’ve followed her from that catwalk outfit at Uni, through the brief break up and to her wedding.  But we do need to remember that having a first child is an intensely private thing between a young couple and must to refrain from tracking her weight gain, food cravings or circling her varicose veins in Heat! Magazine.

I saw a quote this week saying that poor Kate’s womb has been under pressure to perform since that kiss on the balcony last year.  We all know that wombs don’t work well under pressure; not since Henry VIII and his desire for an heir has there been so much speculation over Royal fertility!  Luckily, William seems slightly more relaxed about the sex of his heir so I don’t think there’ll be any heads rolling anytime soon.

The thing I love most about Kate Middleton is that she seems to transcend the default female behaviour of envy.  Women are sometimes quick to bitch or judge about a fellow female if they feel threatened by such gorgeous perfection.  We have all been guilty of it, that’s why I stopped my Beyonce age comparisons because it was taking me to a bad place and switched to Britney instead!  But with Kate, women seem to genuinely love her; my 31 year old self doesn’t be-wail my lack of a baby or husband in comparison or my short and dumpy to her tall and sleek.  We are thrilled that she is pregnant and wish her the best even though we know she will manage to glow for 9 months whereas we may balloon and sweat!

We don’t need to hear about swelling ankles or stretch marks because she has that old Hollywood glamour which prefers mystery to tabloid ‘no-holds barred’ gossip.

Let’s just hope that there are no French paparazzi around when she goes into labour.

A Sensitive Subject - Self Employment

Someone has made me cry today.  And it is their fault that I am now eating Ferrero Rocher in quick succession and snivelling over my laptop.  I wasn’t bullied in the playground and my boyfriend didn’t forget our anniversary; instead I have been judged and discarded by someone I don’t even know.

I should be used to that; as an actress I am not given jobs all the time because of my look, height or dodgy soprano notes and I have made my peace with that.  I have been building my armour against such personal affronts for over a decade but I have left a chink in it.  I forgot to create a thick skin against attacks on my finances.  I have been too busy hardening myself to comments about my weight, cast-ability and talent that I didn’t realise that people are also eager to judge me on what money I have.

Money is a sensitive subject to us all as we dip up and down in recessions and worry about being able to afford to put the heating on this winter.  But to a self-employed person talking money is like eating ice-cream when your teeth have never experienced Sensodyne toothpaste; discomfort verging on pain.

A finance company used by an estate agent were asked to get references about me when I applied to rent a new property.  Pretty standard - I have been renting since I was 18 and think that I have successfully managed to be a grown up, pay bills and rent each month despite my choice to be a self employed person.  This company didn’t want to take the word of my accountant who gave submitted my quite acceptable yearly earnings (probably on par with or more than the average admin staff at this firm) because my accountant didn’t belong to a cool accountant’s club.  So I was asked to scan every bank statement I have received since April and send it to them.  I know I am a sensitive soul who leans towards the dramatic sometimes but it felt like they were rooting about in my knickers drawer.  What right do they have to see how much I spend on groceries or petrol?

So today I get a call saying they deem me not to have sufficient funds to be able to pay rent.  I’m sorry?  There’s no hanging out in the red and I have regular income.  I have looked up the average national annual salary and I earn more than that, so how much should somebody earn to pay £450 rent a month?  I feel like they’ve picked up my oldest, grey-ist knickers from my private drawer and waved them about in public judging them not to be good enough.

 Self-employed people may be on a different tax code than “Ms Normal” but we still earn money.  It is just sporadic and we quickly learn how to do self-assessment, organise our wages and survive on baked beans for 3 days.  We may get thousands one month and less another but it all still works out to be the same as anyone else so I’ll be damned if some assistant is going to make me feel unworthy because the way I earn money looks different on paper.  I suspect that many people’s bank account aren’t ‘desirable’ at the moment but they still manage to stay afloat.

Sorry to rant but I find it upsetting; don’t judge something unless you fully understand it.  I don’t scrutinise where Ms Office Clerk spends her regular monthly income or whether she runs up credit card bills on Amazon as she sits at a desk from 9-5.  So why should she question my choice, to be in an admittedly unstable career, because to be honest I have managed much larger bills in the past and don’t intend to stop now.

I currently look like this - although with a mouthful of Ferrero Rocher!

Money clearly is my button pusher ‘du jour!’  I normally smile and let criticism wash over me by allowing myself to reason with it.  So why the tears and the soap box rant?  Why do I feel so personally attacked?  Tell me I can’t play Elphaba in Wicked because green isn’t my colour or I sing like a fornicating fox and I’ll accept that gracefully but tell me I can’t move into a house with boyfriend because you’ve raked through one current account of mine and my inner lioness is ready to fight.  Or at least ready to weep tears of frustration.

I guess my point it that sometimes you need to look at the bigger picture and not just be seen to tick a box.  Things are never just black or white and you can be a more tolerant and nicer person if you just accept the grey.

I just can't get you out of my head!

I was recently battling through the London Underground during rush hour half asleep but wholly agitated.  As I waded through the stone-faced commuters I found myself singing “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” in my head – it came from nowhere and I managed the whole song before exiting the turnstile.

It was only when listening to a programme on Radio 4 by Shaun Keaveny (Granny Dani has a new favourite thing, I’m now too old even for Radio 2!) that I realised that this Chitty incident was actually an attack of a well-known affliction. 

Earworms.

The word conjures up both comedy and gross images and it made me chuckle.  Now you know me, I love learning something new, so I got straight onto Google and found out..........that I was the last to know about this ailment.

Good ol’ Wikipedia defines an earworm as “a piece of music that sticks in one's mind so that one seems to hear it, even when it is not being played.......a type of song that typically has a high, upbeat melody and repetitive lyrics that verge between catchy and annoying.”

Radio 6 Music presenter Shaun Keaveny has been collecting his listeners’ earworms for three years and has now teamed up with a psychologist and Goldsmiths University to try “unearth” (ha-ha) why people become infected and which songs may be the most “earwormy.”  The Radio 4 programme was fascinating; explaining the high risk situations when these worms can attack such as when we’re doing boring, repetitive activities, early or late in the day or when we are stressed.  I love the idea of a song worming away through your head and what that reveals about your subconscious. 

Without going into too much detail of my medical history, I have found that I seem to suffer from these earworm invasions when I am stressed (see above; in rush hour) or as Frank Sinatra would say, “in the wee small hours.”  I am sure this is common; who hasn’t lain in bed all snuggled up only to find an earworm snuggling up in your brain and gnawing away at your sanity.

My most random experience has to be when I had to have a brain scan:  I found myself in a backless hospital gown being reversed into the long white cylinder and told to “relax” which I can assure you is impossible when you people are peering into your brain.  Well, for some strange reason as I attempted to “relax” and focus on every yoga class I’d ever attended these words entered my head:  “Is it worth a-waiting for, If we live till 84, All we ever get is gru-el.”  It was like a chant over and over again until (inwardly) I broke into the chorus “Food, Glorious, Food, Hot sausage and mustard.....”  Now, I’ve never been in Fagin’s gang nor had I recently watched the film Oliver! or auditioned for the show so why the f&*k was THAT song my earworm in the middle of a brain scan?  What must my reading have looked like?  I am surprised that the nurses didn’t wheel me straight down the corridor to the psychiatric unit or point me towards the nearest Actor’s Retirement Home.

A print out from my MRI scan!

For that occasion my earworm wasn’t annoying but some kind of subconscious safety mechanism. 

According to research by James Kellaris, 98% of individuals experience earworms. Women and men experience them equally often, but earworms tend to last longer for women and irritate them more.  Apparently there are certain groups of people who are more vulnerable to an earworm attack and creative people who work with music are one of them, so as a female musical theatre performer, I instantly fall into the “more vulnerable to an outbreak” category.  Add into the mix that people who sing along with the radio or on their own are even more susceptible and I can only be a one-woman epidemic.  My boyfriend recently exclaimed as I danced around the kitchen “You sing ALL the time!”  I am oblivious to this although his point was proved when I visited my parents and heard my Dad constantly singing or rapping to himself and I found myself joining in or harmonizing from upstairs!  Perhaps it is a genetic or learnt condition?

Researchers at Goldsmith’s University investigated which songs were classic earworms and ABBA’s Waterloo was near the top.  I didn’t need a scientist to tell me that; after years of performing the Mamma Mia! megamix I would get the tube to Waterloo Station, see the sign, and start singing that song again on a loop until the early hours.  As if an 8 show week wasn’t enough!

The words “affliction,”“infected” and “contagious” sound rather dramatic and don’t help with their image but supposedly these earworms are harmless and won’t do us any damage but try telling me that when you have the 2^nd alto line of Mmm Bop! in your brain at 4am; you certainly feel like reaching for a brown paper bag or phoning the NHS helpline then!

So if a scientist was to study me and my earworms would they conclude that I reach to childhood songs in times of stress to remember an innocent, stress-free time or do I simply yearn to live in a musical?  Either way I’m going to embrace my earworms, welcome them in and perhaps dance along in the kitchen to the dismay of my boyfriend.  It seems the healthy option!

All together now.....”Oh you Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, pretty Chitty Bang Bang we love you!”