Stars in Their Eyes

Host

Chris Tarrant (non-broadcast pilot)

Leslie Crowther

Russ Abbott (one-off Elvis special)

Matthew Kelly

Davina McCall (guest presenter)

Cat Deeley (adult and kids' version)

Broadcast

Granada for ITV, 1990 to present

Synopsis

Singer impersonation show. Five people who think they sound like a musical star talk to Matthew about their job, their life and the universe. They then go through the "star door" and (kaboom!) after a few dry ice clouds they suddently become the star of their choosing. You don't see the bit where they're done up in Make-Up for an hour but still...

A member of the public becomes George Michael for the night

They then give a performance sounding like the star of their choice. Of the five, an average of two or three will be people you're guaranteed to have never heard of, the audience has never heard of (but will clap exactly four bars into their song regardless) and the producers have never heard of, but the performances are usually of a high standard.

At the end of the show, the audience votes for whoever they thought was best, the winners going through to the live final. In the live final, the twelve (or whatever) heat winners each sing on live television and there is an hour-long phone poll to decide the winner.

The set of Stars in Their Eyes. The triangle-shaped door in the background is where the contestants emerge from.

Often, record companies watching the show ring up offer contracts to certain constants and aren't told about it until their amount of votes is read out in the results show. The winners are always the bloke playing Marti Pellow from Wet Wet Wet (even if he isn't actually in the final) and BT who take over a million 0898 calls.

Celebrity special

A special show in 1998 allowed celebrities to become other celebrities (confused?) for a night. It's fair to say there were some surprises.

Tricia Penrose (actress from Heartbeat) portrayed Lisa Stansfield; Frank Skinner (comedian) was Elvis Costello; Carol Vorderman (Countdown) became Cher, Steven Houghton (from drama series London's Burning) was Spandau Ballet's Tony Hadley. Five of the cast of supersoap Coronation Street became The Spice Girls.

There have been several more of these since then.

Promotional postcard for the first celebrity special

Catchphrases

"Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be..."

Trivia

The finals during Leslie Crowther's era were pre-recorded.

Matthew Kelly was inititally hired as caretaker host following Leslie's car accident in 1992, but became permanent when Leslie was unable to return and later died in 1996.

For the first two series (1990-91) the shows were 30 minutes each. From 1992, the shows were 45 minutes each and also filmed profiles of the star guests were added.

Champions

Year	Champion	Impersonating
1990	Maxine Barrie	Shirley Bassey
1991	Bernard Wenton	Nat "King" Cole
1992	Amanda Normansell	Patsy Cline
1993	Jacquii Cann	Alison Moyet
1994	John Finch	Marti Pellow
1995	Lee Griffiths	Bobby Darin
1996	Paul Doody	Marti Pellow
1997	Faye Dempsey	Olivia Newton-John
1998	Jason Searle	Neil Diamond
1999	Ian Moor	Chris De Burgh
2000	Garry Mullen	Freddie Mercury
2000*	Nicola Kirsch	Maria Callas (*Millennium special show)
2001	Emma Wilkinson	Dusty Springfield
2002	Stewart Duff	Elvis Presley
2004	Charles Ngandwe	Paul Robeson
2005	Gordon Hendricks	Elvis Presley

Champion of Champions

1999 Ian Moor as Chris De Burgh

Stars in Their Eyes: Kids

2002	Charlotte Geffen	Eva Cassidy
2003	Laura Jenkins	Connie Francis
2004	Paul Cowperthwaite	Michael Jackson
2005	Not known
2006	Christopher Napier	George Formby