My first wish has come true!

On a warm July morning it was somewhat surreal to find myself in the middle of London’s Soho making my way to a recording studio to watch something being put together for pantomime this coming Christmas. But in true panto tradition the behind the scenes preparation happens months and months in advance.

I was in London to take two journalists to meet the writer, director and producer of Aladdin - Paul Elliott. He had invited us as guests to watch how the voice of the 3D Genie was recorded.

The genie, or Ali Genie to you, will make his Hippodrome debut in 3D Bogglevision. If you are coming to see the panto you’ll be given a pair of glasses to wear at appropriate times when the 3D animation is played and our lovely Genie interacts with our handsome Aladdin (Dr Who star John Barrowman) the images appear to hover over the audience and all sorts of other weird and wonderful shapes and creatures jump out at you – its really clever.

I was more excited however about meeting the person who is the voice of the Genie, my childhood hero Derek Griffiths – who is fondly remembered by many a generation of ex-children as one of the presenters of Play School, Play Away, Heads and Tails and Cabbages and Kings.

On arrival we were taken to studio 3 where Paul, and Steve Jonas from Qdos productions (the big panto producers) and Derek had already been recording for the last two hours with the amazing Clare who pushed buttons, timed recordings and did amazing things with a load of complicated technical equipment “a bit better than recording Scooby Doo in Swedish” she said.

We sat down in the sound proofed studio to hear Derek’s familiar voice laughing, ooing, sighing and recording a mountain of dialogue to go with the animated Genie. A fascinating process that can take up to five hours to record just five minutes of film but Derek did it with such timing and was brilliantly funny – he is Ali Genie!

Paul was there to direct the recording and would ask Derek to do a few more laughs here and say a few more words there - I was chuffed as a couple of words I had suggested for dialogue were left in – how amazing is that!

After watching the process for two hours, (and digesting a sandwich from a local takeaway) the journalists I had brought with me interviewed both Paul and Derek for the next 40 minutes as I took some photographs.

After a long day we thanked everyone for their time, gave Paul a big hug and I finally got to shake Derek’s hand! Play School tune floating in my head I headed out of the studio with the journalists, onto the street and dived into a cab for the station.

Am really looking forward to seeing Aladdin and the 3D Genie especially as I know about the recording process and even had some of my words included.

My first wish has come true!

Visit the official website: www.aladdinhippodrome.co.uk