On the basis that many of my favourite Lost in Showbiz items are about people I’ve only dimly heard of, I am pleased to offer a seasonal delicacy featuring Katherine Jenkins and … hang on, let me spell all this right … Alfie Boe.
Katherine and Alfie are opera-lite singers, you may know – or indeed may not – and last year starred together in a production of Carousel in the West End in London. According to various anonymously sourced reports, there was some froideur between the pair, apparently related to dressing room size and final bowing order. Theatre things, anyway.
That was then. This week, according to the Sun, Katherine was in a Manchester branch of HMV doing an album signing, when she noticed staff frantically trying to cover up a poster. Not frantically enough, it seems, as she was able to establish that it was a poster of her “with the c-word scrawled across it”. But who could have done such a thing? As per the Sun’s report: “Staff told her that Alfie was responsible.”
Well now. This is no doubt all the subject of a major lite-opera investigation, but I do hope the probe will establish whether Alfie was in the store at the time – or even in Manchester. The report tantalisingly omits any details of his whereabouts. Sources close to him are claiming that “it could have been anyone”. Had he simply popped in while they were setting up, for a quick poster defacement and perhaps an Andrea Bocelli CD? And is all publicity good publicity, or does it sometimes have such a ring of cobblers that it ends up reinforcing something people vaguely remember having heard about you? A lot of lines of inquiry there, clearly – and when I know more, so will you.
