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Stewart Nicholls On A Festival Of Celebrities and Knees Up Mother Brown

Well – once again, I’m spinning lots of plates in the air at the Edinburgh Festival!! Playing piano and performing in a show, The Singalong Glee Club, whilst booking guests for one of the most popular shows on the fringe, Hardeep Singh Kohli’s “Chat Masala”. So, it’s dealing with the stars one second to playing ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’ next!!!

I’m used to booking and dealing with guests on chat shows at the festival as I ran the Christine and Neil Hamilton show for three years and met many helpful PR people and some great acts. Ranging from comics like Russell Kane to important dignitaries like lord Ian Blair! It’s really interesting meeting lots of different actors, comics and musicians and seeing them on the other side of the stage! Hardeep is great fun to work with and his guests are enjoying the Curry he cooks each day – so are the stage crew!

The Singalong Glee Club is hysterical to perform. David Benson and I get on like a house on fire and the audiences are a hoot when singing along to all the numbers. The most scary part of the show is when we do random requests from the audience: so far I’ve had to play everything from “I Will Survive” to “How Much is that Doggie in the Window” at a seconds notice….! Lucky I play by ear!!

As I’m either on stage, backstage or chained to my laptop, I haven’t seen as many shows as I want to as yet – however, I have seen a few great shows: Lilia La Scala in “War Notes” and “The Wa Wa Sisters”.

Funniest thing so far: it was amusing to see one of my producers being dragged up on stage with the “Wa Wa Sisters”……he was fabulous!!