Birkenhead's Got Talent
As befits the beginning of the Sesquicentenary Year celebrations, the ingeniously named Birkenhead School’s Got Talent kick-started the 150th events in September. It was held in Birkenhead School’s Big Top, also known as the Sports Hall Marquee. All kinds of talent and showmanship from our very own pupils was on display, from attractive dance troupes to ‘guitar-wielding would-be axe-murderers’ (Mr Clark’s description of Oli Carins’ after his performance of ‘Enter Sandman’ by Metallica).
Notable performances included: Harry Smethurst and Callum Hepton’s guitar duo; Elliot Kirkbride-Wright’s rendition of ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ by Keane; and ‘Tranmere: the Musical’, The latter was a probing, intellectual treatise on the phenomenon of mass worship of obscure personalities such as Les Parry and false religious veneration of football teams among modern, post-war working-class adolescent males. Of course, Sparsh Garg’s ‘interesting’ dance to ‘Jai Ho’ by A R Rahman is also worth a mention. What was very special about that evening was that the show was completely organised by two students, namely our Head of School, Ed Gibbs, and School Council regular, Andrew White. As members of the committee for the 150th year celebrations, they were tasked with coming up with an event that would be accessible to everyone involved in School life. Following the success of a TV show that must have stolen their idea, Ed and Andrew came up with Birkenhead School’s Got Talent. Although they began thinking about it in September 2009, so they had a whole year to organise the sports hall marquee and all the other paraphernalia involved with staging the event, the actual list of performers came together at relatively the last minute. Then, the most stressful thing, they say, was getting the acts to practise over the summer. There were also a number of acts who dropped out at the last minute, including one Sixth-former who lost his firesticks over the summer and was unable to perform what had promised to be a spectacular juggling act, which caused extra stress and havoc. On top of this the organisers were trying to balance GCSE and A-Level work. Their own social life became virtually non-existent.
The judging panel consisted of Mr. Armstrong, Miss Burns and our very own Alan J Blain. The criteria for picking the judges was a sense of humour, fair-mindedness and graciousness in their criticism. Miss Burns and Mr Armstrong were perfect candidates, though why Mr Alan Blain was included is a mystery. Overall, they found it a fun and worthwhile experience, and despite it meant that they had to work overtime, they said they would be happy to do something similar again. When asked to name their favourites, they made special mention of ‘Tranmere: The Musical’, but thought all the acts were very good, but especially James Green’s (n.b. the co-author of this article). However the judges deemed Elliot Kirkbride-Wright to be the overall winner.
The evening was a huge success on every front, including the barbecue. Birkenhead School’s Got Talent definitely got 10/10.
James Green and Gwilym Jones
