On 28th and 29th November, the extremely talented piano accompanist Belinda McGlynn and I performed Christmas Concerts at Beresford Hall and Lulworth House, respectively. We’d had a request to repeat the ‘Tender is the Night’ formula, so we sang lots of Cole Porter and Gershwin: ‘Fascinating Rhythm’, ‘Swonderful’ and ‘Let’s call the whole thing off’ by Gershwin. With the audience’s knowledge and consent I changed the words to the second verse of ‘Let’s call the whole thing off’ a little, because it’s always bothered me that no-one actually says, ‘Vanella’, ‘Sarsparella’ or ‘Ersters’. So instead I sang “You like banana and I like vanilla, you coca-cola and I sarsparilla, Banana! Vanilla! Chocolate! Strawberry! Let’s call…” etc. and then “So if you smoke Havannas and I smoke Havahnas, I’ll take up Havannas and give up Havahnas, for you, know we…” etc. The audience agreed that the words were much better!

Of the Cole Porter repertoire, we did ‘I Love Paris’, ‘I Get a Kick out of You’, ‘You do something to me’, ‘Let’s do it’ and ‘Miss Otis Regrets’.

Segueing into Christmas, we started with ‘Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ from Meet Me In St Louis, made famous, of course, by the immortal Judy Garland. What a song!

Then, the traditional Christmas Carols, which went down extremely well at Lulworth House, but at Beresford Hall we had requests for more jazz… So of course we obliged!

As always, the audience were extremely happy, ‘You made my week’, ‘I’ll never forget this concert’ and ‘What a voice!’ were just some of the comments.

Have yourselves a Merry Little Christmas!