A GROUP of Wick youngsters are to share the stage with Scots singing celebrity Michelle McManus in the finale to a variety show in the town next weekend.
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The 25-year-old has been revealed as the VIP guest artiste at the concert being held to raise funds for a memorial garden to victims of two Second World air raids on Wick.
And she has agreed to close the show by joining youngsters from Wick South Primary School in a rendition of Vera Lynn's classic wartime song, "We'll Meet Again".
McManus has had several charts hits since shooting to fame two years ago as the winner of TV's Pop Idol competition. Her appearance, and that of well-known radio and TV presenter Bryan Burnett, has been arranged and paid for by the BBC as part of its fourth series of Let's Do the Show Right Here!
The committee behind the memorial garden project earlier this year successfully applied to feature in the BBC Radio Scotland series.
The BBC is recording preparations made for the show and is to highlight the work of the volunteers in charge of the £500,000 project to provide an overdue tribute to the 10 children who lost their lives in the bombings.
The committee and the Highland Council's arts officer Tom Bryan have been hard at work finalising the programme for the fundraiser in Wick Assembly Rooms on Saturday, October 8, which is to have a wartime theme.
The 15 youngsters from the South school are meanwhile rehearsing for their big moment.
Committee member and Wick Youth Club co-ordinator Anne Webster said the youngsters are very excited at the prospect of sharing the stage with a star. "They're really looking forward to it and we're all delighted Michelle has agreed to sing along with them at the end of the concert, " she said. "I know Michelle has taken a keen interest in what our project is all about."
The school choir is among a host of local artistes who have a part in the concert. The Caithness Big Band will play a selection of wartime numbers, while Wick's Jenny Szyfelbain is to deliver a poem she has written for the occasion. Others on the bill include the Young Traditionals; Andrew Harvey, pipe major of Caithness Junior Pipe Band; the Todd family from Castletown; Wick violinist Kimberley Mackay; and Highland dancer Tanya Horne, from Wick.
The South contingent were among 40 youngsters, aged between five and 18, who took part in the recent Past, Present and Future fundraising concert in the Assembly Rooms.
Wick Youth Club staged workshops over the summer to prepare the cast of dancers and singers, many of whom were making their stage debuts.
The concert, in which the South pupils took on the role as wartime evacuees, was compered by Drew Macleod and choreographed by Carol Webster. It went down a storm with a packed house and raised £1020 for the memorial garden appeal, though that total is set to rise with the sale of copies of a DVD made of the event.
30/09/2005
johnogroat-journal