John BarrowManilow
Published By Dónal on Wednesday August 5th, 2009 at 20:10
Image by paulafunnell via Flickr
Image by paulafunnell via Flickr
Scottish singer, actor, and TV/Radio presenter John Barrowman had an unexpected top ten hit in the iTunes download chart last week, thanks to BBC Radio 1 breakfast presenter Chris Moyles and his team.
- Image via Wikipedia
Having taken a liking to the singer’s version of the Barry Manilow classic “I Made It Through The Rain” which appears on Barrowman’s current album “Music Music Music”, Chris began to plug the song on the show on Monday, playing excerpts and having his whole team singing along, while pretending that John was standing just outside the studio door, serenading them every time they opened it.
On air and via Twitter, the popular breakfast DJ asked his listeners to download the song from any legal music download service, such as 7Digital or the Apple iTunes Store, so that it would be played on his station’s “Chart Show” (which plays the UK’s Official Top 40 Chart) on Sunday evening.
On Tuesday morning, Chris was joined on the phone by John Barrowman who had returned from Los Angeles on Monday, to a bombardment of text messages.
Through the week, the song got as high as number 5 in the iTunes Chart, but eventually it ended up at number 14 in the Official UK Singles Chart, becoming the singer’s first charting single (although I don’t think it was ever officially released as a single) to date, after his digital only release of the Gary Barlow written “What About Us?” from the same album failed to chart. The song was also last week’s highest new entry.
This is not the first time that Chris Moyles has raised the profile of a song so as to get it into the charts. “Chocolate Salty Balls” by South Park charachter Chef, “Mysterious Girl” by Peter Andre and (while testing new download chart rules,) Billie Piper’s “Honey To The Bee” have all been propelled up the charts by Moyles in the past.
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John Barrowman is no stranger to the BBC, having appeared on and presented many BBC shows on television and radio, including:
- BBC children’s Saturday morning variety show Live & Kicking (reporter)
- The Movie Game, a children’s television game show (presenter)
- Reading bedtime stories on CBeebies
- BBC One’s How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?, Any Dream Will Do and I’d Do Anything musical talent shows alongside Andrew Lloyd Webber (judge/coach)
- Elaine Paige on Sunday, a pre-recorded BBC Radio 2 weekly musical theatre and film music showcase (presenter)
- Doctor Who / Torchwood (actor – Captain Jack Harkness)
- The Sound Of Musicals, a show with a live orchestra, showcasing some of the best songs from musicals (co-presenter/performer)
- BBC One’s Tonight’s The Night, a musiclal entertainment show, helping guests dreams come true (presenter). A joint venture between BBC Entertainment Productions and Barrowman Barker Productions (run by John and his agent, Gavin Barker)
He has also guest presented on ITV’s This Morning, filling in for a holidaying Phillip Schofield, and has appeared numerous times on ITV mid-morning show, Loose Women.
John will be appearing in La Cage Aux Folles at the Playhouse Theatre, London, for a limited run from 14 September to 28 November 2009 (excluding 20 November). He will play the role of Albin, a drag queen whose iconic number “I Am What I Am”, in which he comes out as being gay and proud of it, has become John’s own anthem and appears on the album Music Music Music.
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Chris Moyles visited Ireland recently to film much of his appearance on Who Do You Think You Are? The TV show on BBC One, in which celebrities trace their family tree back as far as they can. During the programme, he discovered that his grandmother had lived for some time in Dublin, and worked at the Jacobs Biscuit factory, which ironically is now the home of the Irish National archive, which he had to visit to search for family records.
Eventually, Chris traced some of his family back to Ballina Co. Mayo, discovering that his family must long ago have worked for monks, hence his surname “Moyles” from the Irish “maol” which of course means “bald”! (It is historically regarded that many monks were bald).
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