Nathan Rowley is in many ways your average 12-year-old boy – but in a couple of weeks he’ll return to school with the added stardust of a Christmas TV hit behind him.
The Ashton-on-Mersey School pupil featured in Victoria Wood’s That Day We Sang, the Boxing Day musical on BBC2 that contained a number of scenes that were filmed on location in Altrincham.
Originally written by Wood for the Manchester International Festival last year, it stars Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton as a pair of middle-aged people who get a second chance of life when they meet at a reunion of the Manchester Children’s Choir.
Having just missed out on the main boy’s role of Jimmy – he got down to the last three – Nathan was handed the part of Killelea, which included a singing scene in St Peter’s Assembly Rooms on Cecil Road in Hale (pictured behind Nathan above).
He also featured alongside lead man Michael Ball in a scene involving a song called Happiness Street, which was filmed in Woolton in Liverpool.
Below: The ‘Happiness Street’ scene from That Day We Sang, with Nathan Rowley second from the right
Nathan said writer, songwriter and director Wood was “really friendly”. “She wasn’t like a normal famous person who would maybe not want you to go near them,” he added. “She would have proper full-blown conversations with you, as would Michael Ball. He was very funny.”
He even had Wood in stitches by doing his own take on her famous ‘Kimberley’ sketch. “When we were recording a song in the studio, she was sat in a sound-proof box so that she could hear us but we couldn’t hear us. I said, ‘Victoria, have you seen my friend Kim-ber-ley?’ She found it really funny.”
Since the filming a year ago, Nathan has gone on to win parts in a couple of TV adverts and hopes now to pursue a career as an actor. His ultimate ambition? “Hollywood!”
Below: Nathan with Ball, Wood and other stars of That Day We Sang, and filming in St Peter’s Assembly Rooms in Hale
