Craig Chalmers can’t stop smiling. Even when he’s belting out Any Dream Will Do with a cast of doting schoolchildren at his side, he can’t help but flash those bright pearly whites at his adoring fans. It is plainly obvious that two years on from winning the starring role in Bill Kenwright’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Craig is still living his dream, on stage, every night.

“It’s crazy how much life has changed since I was playing those dingy clubs back in Scotland!” he enthuses, as we sit chatting on a bench by the River Cam. “It’s just nice that I’ve got my break and been able to make a success of it because I always had fears I might have been a disaster and the critics might not have liked me. Anything could have gone wrong, or maybe I couldn’t have coped with the demands of the schedule. You know it’s a hard job to do, so I’m delighted that I’ve managed to make such a good run of it.”

Prior to getting his big break on the BBC reality show Any Dream Will Do, Edinburgh-born singer Craig had tried pretty much every avenue to get into showbusiness. The 27-year-old, who says he could sing before he could talk, had performed with male strip troupe G-Force, delighting ladies’ nights and holiday park crowds. He’d had a top 10 hit with the boy band No Reason, performing alongside the likes of Blue, McFly, Sugababes and Girls Aloud. Craig even got into the last 30 for the reality show Pop Idol, which was eventually won by Michelle McManus.
“I’d been trying to break into the business for years,” he recalls. “I’ve played dingy clubs on nights when it’s been peeing with rain and no-one wants to know, and you wonder why you even bothered. But you just have to keep trying because for every one of me, there’s thousands of others that want to do the same thing. You just need the right person to see you and believe in you.”

For Craig, that person was renowned West End producer Bill Kenwright, a judge on the show Any Dream Will Do, who championed the Scottish star, even though, with no musical training, he was the underdog. Craig recalls: “I was banging my head against a brick wall in the mid part of the show but Bill took me away by myself to the theatre – and helped me to turn around my performance. He’s really taken me under his wing and mentored me.”
Although Lee Mead went on to win the series and, with it, the starring role in the West End show Joseph, it wasn’t long before Craig was reunited with his coat of many colours when Bill decided his protégé was perfect to play Joseph in his touring version of the show he calls his ‘juggernaut of joy’.

Craig still remembers the opening night nerves. “That first night was something else,” he says with a slight shudder. “I can remember it very well. It was pretty scary at the time, but it’s good now to have two years’ experience under my belt and be able to not be so nervous these days, which means I can express myself, relax and enjoy it a lot more.”

Clearly, the singer has grown into the role and critics have had nothing but praise for his performances, with Craig being dubbed a ‘dream Joseph’, and the Independent describing the show as a ‘deliriously droll, technicolor triumph’.

Cambridge folk have the chance to judge for themselves this Christmas when the show, which retells the Biblical story of Joseph, his 11 brothers and the coat of many colours, comes to the Corn Exchange for a three-week festive run. “I’ve heard really nice things about Cambridge and what a lovely place it is to be, so I’m looking forward to coming,” says Craig enthusiastically.


Full story in Cambridge Style - December 2009.

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