Amanda’s got her talent uncovered
‘But then, I’m going back to where I started… in musical theatre,’ says Holden. ‘My first ever job was in The Sound Of Music playing Liesl Von Trapp, then I branched out and went into comedy. I’ve been in the West End a couple of times.’
She even got an Olivier nomination for her starring role in Thoroughly Modern Millie.
This whole project started when she and her daughters, all obsessed with The Greatest Showman, did a video of them performing Tightrope to surprise her husband, Chris, on their tenth anniversary. He loved it so much he persuaded her to put it up on Twitter and a bidding war between record companies ensued.
‘And once the deal was done, me and Chris, who is a music producer, locked ourselves away for a year,’ says Holden. ‘And we were very lucky in that we were left to our own devices, so we chose everything and there was no push back. It was an amazing thing to be able to do together.’
And working together turned out to be… OK most of the time. She initially doesn’t want to say what their nicknames for each other were but after some clues – ‘a well-known duo where the husband is in charge and the wife less in charge’ – admits it’s Ike and Tina Turner.
‘We bounce well off each other but we’ve been together for 17 years and we’re always bickering because we’re such different people,’ she says.
She reckons they drove their daughters mad but that they chipped in with their ideas, ‘so it’s very much a family affair’.
The first single, Over The Rainbow, was released as a fundraiser for the NHS during lockdown and went straight to No.1 on the iTunes chart. Now there’s a new single, a duet with Sheridan Smith of I Know Him So Well, from the musical Chess. It was originally recorded by Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson in the 1980s.
‘I saw Sheridan in Funny Girl, saw her in Joseph when she played the narrator and I’m a big fan of hers,’ says Holden, laughing at the fact she bagged the bigger Elaine Paige part for herself. ‘I couldn’t believe she wanted to do it because she was heavily pregnant but she came in and did it.’
The album has even had a big thumbs up from her BGT boss Simon Cowell, who Holden has been in regular contact with since he broke his back in an accident.
‘I took it round to his house and sat there while he played it on his speaker system in every room of his house so I was dying but he was unusually complimentary,’ she says. ‘It put me right off my stroke.’
As for the future, having dodged most of lockdown-era homeschooling – ‘I was in charge of art and drama and cartwheeling and my husband did everything else. And they definitely learned some new swear words, which we put under “language skills”’ – she can’t wait to get back out there. She reckons she ends up doing a musical every seven years (she opened Shrek as Princess Fiona) and would love to do The Greatest Showman or Les Mis but is actually thinking of touring the album.
‘I would love to sing live, so watch this space, depending on the Covid situation,’ she says.
Now it’s all turned out hunkydory, did she ever worry she was singing songs that have been done by the best in the business, up to and including Barbra Streisand?
‘Well, I grew up listening to her,’ says Holden. ‘She’s my hero. I’m basically a gay man in a woman’s body.’