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Paul Mansell <astonwoodhouse>

"MarlowFM"

	From The Jonas Brothers Live at The Hospital to Evensong in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.	593 giorni fa
	Amongst the advantages of having a wife who is a journalist is being invited to special press events. We've all been signed up as a family to Disney's exclusive club that gives favoured journalists and celebrities the chance to see new movies in advance, usually screened in their own cinema at their London headquarters building. The UK preview of High School Musical 2 was the exception when they took over a big chunk of the O2. Our ten year old twin daughters friends were well impressed when they told them about the day; certainly something they'll always remember I reckon. I have to confess to being totally unaware of The Jonas Brothers until my wife came home the other day to say that we'd been invited to be part of a selected audience for a live acoustic set. It was being filmed to be shown on the Disney Channel later in the summer leading up to the opening of their new movie 'Camp Rock' which is expected to be as big as High School Musical was (and still is). Whether they'll take some advice and change the title for the UK market to Rock Camp, I don't know. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTkIQ... Well a visit to the venue alone, The Hospital in Covent Garden, would have satisfied me (see http://www.thehospitalclub.com/TheHo... and also http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/clubs/th..., but to get to see and hear the next big boy band that my girls (and I include my wife Hayley here) and probably many more pre and post pubescent girls are going to go crazy over and actually discover that I enjoyed their music was definitely a bonus. And it nearly didn't happen...! During the week, Pheobe and Issy along with a couple of their friends who are also local choristers had attended a three day course run by The Royal School of Church Music held at Magdalen College School in Oxford. They got to sing at the daily evensong service in the Magdalen College Chapel (see http://www.magd.ox.ac.uk/college_lif... but at the end of the course, 30 choristers were selected from the 100 who wereon the course to sing at evensong on the Saturday evening at Christ Church Cathedral (http://www.chch.ox.ac.uk/index.php?o... Issy and Phoebe were both chosen to join the specially formed choir for the service in this world famous and incredibly beautiful building. Although Oxford is not too far to travel from our home town of Marlow, the question was could we make it there on time if we went to the Jonas Brothers gig in London first? We had to get the girls to Oxford by 3.30pm for a rehearsal leading up to the actual evensong that began at 6.00pm (or 6.05pm Oxford time. Did you know that some of Oxford is on a different time to the rest of the UK who subscribe to Greenwich Meantime? (see http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwi... and http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/inf... The Jonas Brothers were due to start their short acoustic set at 11.45am, play for about 20 minutes, answer a few questions from the younger members of the audience and then do a signing session of CD's and souvenir books; the whole thing should be over by 12.30pm. As Phoebe and Issy had both been asked by our Disney PR contact, Gerry, if they would ask the band a question each and they were really keen to go, Hay and I agreed that it was probably 'doable' - we were equally as excited as the girls if the truth be known. I drove us to Maidenhead to catch the train from there and we were in Town by 10.30am with ample time to get to Covent Garden. As we were somewhat early, we decided to grab a coffee (a hot chocolate and muffin in the girls case) but managed to pick the cafe that had the slowest assistant doing drinks! By the time we got our order (which of course was wrong anyway as we each ended up with large instead of our requested regular size) the ample time margin had vanished and we were left trying to finish our drinks without removing the linings from our throats. We needn't have worried as the taxi pulled up outside The Hospital at 11.30am giving us plenty of time to do the meet and greet bit with the various Disney people delegated to make sure all was well with us; hand out Jonas Brothers CD's and Camp Rock books for the kids, provide press packs for the grown ups and give us release forms to sign prior to the filming. Five children, including our two, had been preselected to ask a question each and were put through their paces before they went down to the basement TV studio. Our two said their bits cooly and with confidence as did two others, but one poor girl who looked a few years younger was not at all happy and really didn't want to do it. Her mum kept telling her not to be so silly and with every forceful 'encouraging' word she uttered the unfortunate girl became more defiant. We were escorted down to the studio at ten to 12 only to be told that the band were still rehearsing so we'd have to go back upstairs to the 'holding area' again... To be continued.
	inserito da Paul Mansell