A SONG FOR 'THE BEAR'
I wrote the song and the lyric [opus 509] 'Somewhere a star shines for everyone' [/ opus] for [opus 496] THE BEAR [/ opus] and thought about who could sing it for the recording, set for 30th March at Whitfield Street. It was to be sung first as Tilly skates down the frozen Thames accompanied by the Star-Bear from the skies and the Polar-Bear from the North Pole, which was a delightful idea for a setting.
We needed a girl singer to record it and I rang Roxy Bellamy at Sony Classical. She said: 'We've just signed a 12-year old girl called Charlotte Church. We'll send a demo over.' Chris Black, her initial producer at Sony, was so excited that he evidently ran all the way from Gt. Marlborough St. to Goodge Street, clutching a video of his prodigy in his hand. We were sitting outside in the sun having lunch and he puffed up to us screaming 'You must see her, you must watch this!' We went up to the office and decided to take her on. She recorded the song beautifully, at the same time becoming the star of a one-hour documentary on the making of the film made by 'Screen First' and called [opus 510a] 'The Bear's Tale' [/ opus], produced and directed by Paul Madden, the commissioning editor for Channel 4, as he had also been on 'The Snowman' and 'Granpa'.