MY LIGHT BULB MOMENT

TheaTre producer Judy Craymer, MBe, 61, created box office hit Mamma Mia! The Musical, as well as Mamma Mia! The Movie and this year’s sequel Mamma Mia! here We Go again. Single, she lives in London. AFTER I graduated from the Guildhall School of Music in 1977, I worked as a stage manager. It was when I was working for Tim Rice on the musical Chess in 1982, that I met Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson from Abba — they were doing the music for the show.

I went on to work in film and TV, but kept nagging Björn and Benny to let me do something with their Abba songs. I felt instinctively that the ballad The Winner Takes It All was intended for an actress to sing at the end of a show.

I drove everyone mad playing Abba tapes. There was something theatrical yet relatable about their music. Finally in about 1995, Bjorn said: ‘If you can get the right story, then maybe . . .’ I brought in writer Catherine Johnson, who came up with the mother-daughter story, where Donna, the single mother doesn’t know who the father of her child is.

It took me ten years to raise the finance to stage the musical. I had to pay lawyers’ fees, a workshop and creative team. I ran up a £20,000 overdraft, sold my tiny flat, lived on handouts from my parents. I took a chance on me!

In 1999, Mamma Mia! opened at the Prince Edward Theatre in the West End. It was a huge success.

In 2008 I produced Mamma Mia! The Movie, starring Meryl Streep. It was a risk. Phyllida Lloyd, who directed the musical, had never directed a film before. We had four female leads. It became the fifthhighest grossing film of the year.

I was determined not to rush out another movie a year later. Plus we knew Meryl didn’t do sequels.

So when we came to make the second movie, we hit on the idea of going back and forth in time.

Lily James plays young Donna. Cher is her mother. And Meryl agreed to sing two songs in the film. I joked that for a long time the story of Mamma Mia! was the story of Judy Craymer and two blokes with beards who kept saying ‘no’. But meeting Björn and Benny was life-changing.

MaMMa Mia! here We Go again is available on DVD and Blu-ray today from Universal Pictures home entertainment.