2008 Babes in the woods

Dennis Willis took over as producer, and does this and the next four, using his own scripts. Lauren Atkinson joined this year, as a dancer. Unknown to her she’d been on the waiting list for several years, and her name had come to the top! Her dad Steve came along as chaperone, and made the mistake of saying “I’m here anyway for Lauren: is there anything you’d like me to do?”. In no time, he was helping Chris Bradley backstage, making props, filming the show and making the DVD! He also made an old-fashioned “slap-stick”-  two pieces of wood hinged together to make a loud slap sound for when the Dame hit a naughty schoolboy with a cane. Deliberately mis-timing the hitting and the sound got four big laughs from the audience.

Judith Hartley also joined: initially asked along to audition for the pivotal part of Tyson the Dog, she ended up as Musical Director (and Ruth Kerrigan was the Dog!). Keeley Camilleri, Robin Moorby and Steve Clayton also joined.

For the past few years, the programme just showed one block of about 30 “Dancers”. From this year, the dancers were shown as Group 1 and Group 2, roughly matching primary and secondary school ages, a system we still use