Jim Bob
Jim Bob had 14 top 40 singles and a number one album and played over 800 gigs all over the world as lead singer with Carter USM.
Since Carter, Jim has released two albums and three singles with his disco-pop-punk group Jims Super Stereoworld, four solo albums as Jim Bob and played various live shows both with his band and solo.
In 2001 he joined his old Carter bandmate Fruitbat onstage once again as part of supergroup Whos The Daddy Now?
These days you'll probably catch him sat on a stool in a club somewhere playing Jim Bob songs both old and new on his acoustic guitar.
My First Panto
In 1968 my mum took me to Streatham Odeon to see Dick Emery and Joe Brown in
Cinderella. At some point in the show Joe Brown, who was playing the part of Buttons, performed a song on various acoustic and electric guitars, banjos, ukuleles, banjoleles, lutes, mandolins etc. I thought he was a genius, although he may have just been a bit of a show off. Afterwards my mother took me backstage to meet Dick Emery, who was an old friend of hers. I had started to think this all might have been an elaborate and strange dream but I Googled 'Dick Emery and Joe Brown in Cinderella at the Streatham Odeon' and found that such a performance did indeed take place.
Antony DunnAntony Dunn's writing for the theatre includes three plays for children,
Timewarp 2000,
Shepherds' Delight and Riding Lights Theatre Company's
Goose Chase, touring the UK this Christmas. He has published two collections of poetry,
Pilots and Navigators (Oxford University Press 1998) and
Flying Fish (Carcanet Oxford Poets 2002) and a third,
Bugs, is forthcoming.
Justin Edwards Justin Edwards is an actor, comedian and musician best known for his Perrier-nominated comic character 'Jeremy Lion'. He is also one third of the Radio 4 sketch troupe 'The Consultants' and has written a wide variety of songs for them as well as enjoying numerous other radio and TV appearances.
My First Panto I remember being taken on a Sunday School outing aged five to Salisbury Playhouse to see
Jack and the Beanstalk and being amazed and terrified in equal measure. In later years I was always involved in the local am-dram panto, working my way up from pantomime horse to Buttons, and then wed all go on a trip to see the glitz of the big pantos at Southampton Mayflower. Ours was always much better of course.
Howard Goodall
Howard's television scores and themes include: Blackadder, Mr Bean, Red Dwarf, The Catherine Tate Show, Q.I., The Vicar of Dibley, The Borrowers and The Gathering Storm. His best-known musicals include The Hired Man, The Kissing-Dance, Two Cities, A Winter's Tale and The Dreaming. His award-winning credits as a TV presenter include: Choir of the Year, Young Musician of the Year (BBC), Howard Goodall's Big Bangs / Great Dates /20th Century Greats, Musical Nation (with The South Bank Show) and How Music Works (Channel 4). He is the recipient of the 2007 Sir Charles Groves Prize for Outstanding Contribution to British Music.
Kit Hesketh-Harvey
Kit is best known as one half of the musical comedy act, Kit and the Widow. Other performing credits include Salad Days (National Tour) and Figgy Pudding (Lyric Hammersmith). Kits talents extend to scriptwriting, and credits include Beautiful and Damned (Lyric Theatre), The Vicar of Dibley (BBC) and Maurice (Merchant Ivory Productions). He has also worked as lyricist and librettist/translator at the English National Opera, Scottish Opera, the Barbican and for the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. Kit is a regular panelist on Just a Minute for Radio 4. Dillie Keane
Dillie studied at Trinity College Dublin and LAMDA. A burgeoning acting career was hijacked by the extraordinary success of her satirical cabaret trio, Fascinating Aida. The group played six West End season and toured the UK extensively.
Overseas, Fascinating Aida were nominated for a 2005 Drama Desk Award for their most recent New York run. They have also played San Francisco, Singapore, Berlin, Kenya, New Zealand and three tours of Australia.
Dillie has just completed two sell-out tours and a West End run of Grumpy Old Women Live.
She was recently pleased to be awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Portsmouth.Issy van Randwyck
Issy was one third of the writing and performing partnership of Fascinating Aida from 1994 1999 (Olivier Nominations for Best Entertainment 1995 and 2000) and is currently playing the part of Marjorie Houseman in the hit musical Dirty Dancing at the Aldwych Theatre. She was most recently seen in Once in a Lifetime (RNT) and soon to be seen in an episode of Trial and Retribution(ITV). Other work includes: Calico (Duke of York Theatre), Midsummer Nights Dream and Kiss Me Kate (Olivier Nomination for Best Supporting Performance) and A Little Night Music (RNT). Mark RavenhillMark has always been a huge fan of pantomime. Mark Ravenhill's first play was produced by Out Of Joint and presented at the Royal Court Theatre before a successful transfer to the Theatre Upstairs at the Ambassadors in 1996. This was the start of a successful career which includes productions produced with the Royal National Theatre and further West End transfers.
His play, The Cut, starring Sir Ian McKellan, opened at the Donmar Warehouse in February 2006, directed by the award winning Michael Grandage. A month later Citizenship, a play about a boy's journey of self-discovery, opened at the Royal National Theatre.
Mark's one-man show, a brilliant satire called Product, was written for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and then transferred to the Royal Court Theatre in 2005. Still currently touring throughout Europe, this clever monologue concerns a script executive pitching his film to a young, unseen starlet, 'a Sienna Miller type' - but nothing's that straightforward.
My First PantoI remember the principal boy singing the Carpenters'
Top of the World at my first panto. I remember the jokes about local people and places. I remember the sweets being thrown into the audience. I remember the huge costumes of the Dame, each one vaster and sillier than the one before. I remember the excitement of roaring out all the behinds you and oh no he isn't, which we seemed to know as if by instinct. And I remember the bliss of singing along with the song sheet. I remember it so clearly because every year I get just the same thrill going to the pantomime. It's why I work in the theatre.
George Stiles and Anthony Drewe
George and Anthony's musicals together include Mary Poppins (Prince Edward, London; New Amsterdam, New York); Honk! (Watermill, Stephen Joseph, Royal National Theatre and over 2000 productions world-wide), winner of three Best Musical awards: the 2000 Laurence Olivier Award, the FNB VITA Award in South Africa, and the Elliot Norton Award in the USA; Just So (most recently at Chichester Festival Theatre, 2004) which won the 1985 Vivian Ellis Prize; Peter Pan (Det Ny Theater, Copenhagen; the Royal Festival Hall) and Tutankhamen (Northcott Theatre and Imagination Building).
Independently, George is the composer of Moll Flanders (winner of Best Musical in the 1995 TMA Awards), Tom Jones (Theatre Royal, York, North Shore Music Theatre, NYMF New York) and The Three Musketeers (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and North Shore Music Theatre, 2007). Other recent projects include the scores for Habeas Corpus, Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya at the Donmar. Anthony wrote the lyrics for The Card (Watermill, Open Air, and UK Tour - nominated for Best Revival in the 1995 Laurence Olivier Awards), and A Twist of Fate (Singapore, voted Best Musical of the Year).
They are currently working on their new musical Soho Cinders. Sarah Travis
As Musical Director/Arranger at the Watermill Theatre Newbury: Sweeney Todd: Transfers to Trafalgar Studios and New Ambassadors,and O'Neill Theatre Broadway (Winning a Tony and Drama Desk Award for Best Orchestrations),The Hot Mikado (TMA Nomination Best Musical), Mack And Mabel (TMA Nomination Best Musical,and Transfer to Criterion), Fiddler On The Roof and Gondoliers (Both Winners of TMA Best Musical), Pinafore Swing,Ten Cents A Dance,Piaf and Carmen.
As Composer: Peter Pan, Oxford Playhouse, Seven Pantomimes for Chipping Norton, A Star Danced Watermill, Tales My Lover Told Me Kings Head and songs for: The Challenge: Shaw, Late and Lyrical : Jermyn Street, Best Of British: Bridewell.
As Pianist and MD: Julian Clary: Natural Born Mincer, Issy Van Randwyck: Dottie Lottie, Fascinating Aida Barefaced Chic, Lily Savage (Purcell Rooms), Alvin Stardust, Dillie Keane (Single Again and Citizen Keane), Barb Jungr, Adele Anderson and Drop Dead Divas.
