Hello blog readers! It's been a while, I apologise. Despite spending most of my time being unemployed, I've been quite busy! But enough rambling, let's get to what you came here for!
I'm going to make you read a word. Some of you might love it. some of you probably don't understand it, but here it is; Twitter. I have to admit, I only got sucked in to Twitter when I heard people talking about it on the radio, and for a while I didn't use my account as I wasn't really sure what I was doing with it. Oh, how things change!
Yes, I do follow a few 'celebrities', but my 'following' list mainly comprises of friends (who pretty much say the same things on Twitter as they do on their Facebook statuses, and people in the performing arts industry who I think might leak any exciting information or job opportunities. Then there is one man who is a mystery to all. His knowledge of the performing arts world is extensive, he is witty, he is a legend, he is @westendproducer!
A few months ago, @westendproducer launched a competition on Twitter, to try and find exceptional talent and to award two people the glamorous title of West End Leading Man and West End Leading Lady. It was cleverly called 'Search for a Twitter Star' (which I will now shorten to sfats!) All you had to do was upload a video of yourself singing onto YouTube, and people could vote for you to go through to the next round, etc. I was debating whether to do it or not, and I was quite busy planning and doing other projects, and I missed the deadline.
Over 600 entries were submitted, and several rounds passed, but I pushed it to the back of my mind and forgot about it. Then a few weeks ago, I saw a tweet saing that the final would be performed live in a West End theatre. Gutted. I tried to forget about it again.
And then, on July 3rd, a magical magnificent tweet appeared on my shiny new phone's screen. There was to be a chance of performing in the show as part of the choir. All you had to do was tweet @westendproducer that you were interested and things would go from there. I went for it. A few minutes later I received an email saying that @westendproducer was following me back! I did a little shriek and eagerly sat watching my phone to see if anything else would happen.
Around half an hour later, I received a direct message from him asking for my email address. Oooooh! I sent it back in a flash. And then... nothing. Hmmmm.
Later that day I received an email from one of his team saying that the show was on the following Monday, and rehersals would take place the day before from 10am-4pm. Email back if you could make it, it was first come, first served.
I sat in utter wonderment staring at the email and thought about what I should do. I would already be in London on the Saturday for my Paralympics opening ceremony rehearsal, if I could just find someone to stay with then I could do it.
I replied yes anyway, and immediately expressed my delight through the medium of a Facebook status update with plenty of exclamation marks. To my delight, one of my fellow castmates from Christmas and my recent outdoor Shakespeare venture offered me somewhere to stay. This was it, I was going!!
Saturday rolled around, and after my Paralympics rehearsal, I dragged my life through London to meet my hostess at Victoria. I got lost. But thankfully with the marvellousness of mobile phones, we located each other, and I made my way to my home for the next two nights. I had already planned my route to rehearsala for the morning, but one quick glance from Hannah told me that I had to re-plan! I hate London travelling! Journey sorted, I went to bed, praying that I would wake up in time.
Thankfully, I decided to obey my alarm clock on Sunday morning, and crept around the house getting ready, and checking Twitter to see how many other people were on their way. It was all getting very exciting!
I made my way outside into the pouring rain and began my journey to Bermondsey. From the tube it wasn't a very long walk at all, but I had left my house in Kettering on Saturday in glorious sunshine so I didn't have a coat. I quickly realised that this was a big mistake. We had one soggy choir when we arrived.
Typically, I was the first person from the choir to arrive so parked myself in a corner and gazed around the room at the other performers. I could tell that the larger group of people to my left were the finalists of the competition, and there was another group in front of me with singing something I wasn't familiar with and talking in American accents. Intriguing.
A few more choir members arrived, all with names beginning with N which amused us all for about 5 seconds. We all seemed friendly enough, it looked like it was going to be fun! The director, Drew, introduced himself and ran us through what would happen at the show, and then we began!
We would be singing 'One Day More' from 'Les Miserables', an awesome song, and I was going to be singing it on a West End stage! Well, hopefully, we were told in an email that if we weren't up to standard we would be kicked out! I was terrified!
I sat myself with the altos and prayed that I wouldn't be found out!
We did some pretty funky warm-ups and then got to grips with the song. As soon as we started singing, it sounded epic! I grabbed my phone and recorded it an obscene amount of times!
We were then escorted through the streets to a church hall where we would be placed in relation to where we would be on stage. We also got to watch the other special guest performers rehearse which was nice. It turned out that the American accents were for a snippet of 'The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee', which was hilarious, and the cast were really nice. They're performing at Edinburgh this year if any of you are going up, go see it! Places spaced, we headed back and had a rehearsal with the band! We sounded great with just a piano, but it sounded so much better with the band, my phone came out again for more recording.
There was quite a lot to get through as they were rehearsing the whole show, but we got let go early, so I carefully retraced my route back to West Dulwich. I was getting good at this Tube stuff!
I got back to the house just for the last five minutes of the men's final at Wimbledon, just in time to see Andy Murray lose and do his big old speech, bless him. But I didn't care, I had harmonies to remember and shirts to iron for tomorrow! Aaaagh!
I sat around in a daze for the rest of the evening as my body wasn't used to waking up at ridiculous hours, but I felt bad about going to sleep early in someone else's house! I didn't want to make them creep around me, so I stuck it out.
I managed to get a few more hours sleep that night, as we weren't called until 1pm. I said goodbye to Hannah and thankfully made my way in the sunshine to my destination. We were all told to meet somewhere as a group before getting to the theatre, so we all congregated around the home of Les Miserables, naturally. Of course I was the first person there again, so I put my iPod on and listened to our song picturing myself actually in the show. I was getting a few strange looks from passers-by until I realised that I was singing out loud, the songs of Les Mis, outside the theatre where it's performed. Well done Natalie. Thankfully I wad saved by the arrival of several more choir members.
Everyone arrived, and we made our way a couple of theatres along to the Lyric Theatre, home of 'Thriller'. We signed in at the stage door and were shoved in the upper circle bar where we were to wait. For the whole day.
We got to go onto the stage for spacing purposes and sang a little snippet of the song which was awesome! But before we knew it, we were shoved back in the bar area.
Then began the tech run! We were brought down the stairs ready for our performance, when we spotted a strange looking man half way down the stairs. It was someone wearing a latex mask, it was @westendproducer!! We still had no idea who it was, he's a sneaky one!
We piled onto the set ready to sing, and then the special guests appeared! We were going to sing with Louise Dearman, Kerry Ellis, Tim Driesden and Jon Lee! We sang it through with them and it sounded beautiful. With the audience there, it was going to be an amazing atmosphere, I couldn't wait!
Back to the bar we went, to be faced with a make-up team. I had some sneaky rouge put on and a spot of trampy red lipstick, and then ran out for a cheeky McDonalds before the show started! Well, a girl's got to eat!
We came back into the theatre and I came face to face with Jon Lee by the stage door, he didn't seem as chirpy as I was expecting but hey ho. We walked through the wings to get back to the bar and I nearly walked head-on into Kerry Ellis too! I'm guessing it wouldn't have been my finest hour throwing a McChicken Sandwich in her face!
While the final checks were going on, and the host of the show, Mr Aled Jones was rehearsing his script, a few of us made our way into the auditorium to watch. And there he was, @westendproducer was in one of the boxes with his Jean Valjean teddy bear, Miss Saigon blow-up doll, bottle of Dom and laptop. We were almost in spitting distance, but we still didn't know who he was. One of the boys tweeted him something about his bottom in the box and he turned around and gave us a cheeky wave!
But then it was showtime! Tim Driesden would be singin Jean Valjeans part in the finale, but he was in the circle with us to watch the first half of the show. I seized the opportunity to sit next to him as no-one else dared! He smelled lovely! I wanted to nestle on his shoulder! But back to the show, the contestants gave it their all in Act One, they all sang a solo and nearly all were ripped to pices by at least one of the four judges. We were all shocked and were gasping in pain for them, but the judges were honest, and that's all you want. Then the audience got to vote! Via Twitter! It was so exciting! You had to vote for the one boy and one girl you wanted out of the competition. I knew exactly which female I was voting for as she had given me nothing but evil looks throughout rehearsal the previous day, ha! It was really hard to pick between the boys but I made my decision and stuck to it.
Act one over, interval time! I waved goodbye to the delectable-smelling Tim as he had to get changed, and we all sat in around chatting about how bitchy the judges had been and who we thought was going to win.
And then came act two! The losing 6 contestants were booted off leaving the final 4 to battke it out in a sing-off. Then it was all about winning votes. The guest performers did their things, and everyone was suitably impressed, but our time was edging ever closer!
Time seemed to fly past and just as they were announcing the winners, we were called down to side stage. We just saw the winners announced before we legged it downstairs. Kara was the winner for the girls, and Felipe was the winning boy (who I had voted out in ound one, oops!). While we were waiting, the winners got to sing a duet with Kerry Ellis and Jon Lee, which sounded amazing, but we couldn't watch :(
And then it was our turn! All of the performers took their bows and the finale was announced, we were on! We all raced into position, precariously balancing on the Thriller set steps and the twinkling of the music began!
The guest performers rocked their solo sections, the sfats winners were great singing theirs, and then we joined in to create the most beautiful sound! I had the biggest grin on my face the whole way through the song, completely forgot my harmony lines so made them up, but it was all over in a flash! Before I knew it I was taking my bow and walking off the stage! I wanted to get back on and do it again! It was absolutely buzzing, it was definitely worth the wait!
We grabbed our stuff and began to go our separate ways, I couldn't believe it was over! An usher walked past us with a big pile of programmes and I managed to get one thanks to the kindness of fellow choirgirl Nicole, I was so excited to see my name in it! Eek! We ended up getting lost trying to find out way out of the theatre, and when we eventually found the stage door to get out of, I nearly took Kerry Ellis out with my giant bag! I don't think we're destined to work together somehow! Haha!
I went for a drink with Nicole and choir boy Nathan across the road, before running for my train home. It was an amazing experience but I was just so tired.
I managed to stay awake for the whole journey home, and read the programme to find out that the winning boy Felipe lives just down the road from me, and to think I voted him out when I should have been supporting my own, oops!
As for sfats, will it happen again? Will I be brave enough to enter next year? Who knows, but I'm proud to say that I was there performing at the very first one!
Thank you director Drew, and of course, thank you @westendproducer, whoever you are...! x
Ps, here’s a link to one of the recordings made 
