Last Choir Standing

Nick Knowles

A talented presenter, Nick Knowles is well known to TV viewers as the host of DIY SOS, City Hospital and Who Dares Wins. Nick has presented a range of programmes across news, sport, quiz shows, documentary features, and entertainment in a TV career that has spanned Sydney, Phoenix Arizona, and Maidstone.

Recent travels have included a visit to Nairobi for Comic Relief and he presented a heart rendering report from Zambia for Sport Relief.

Equally at home fronting a series of wedding programmes, BBC One’s The Big Day, and highlighting the plight of Orang-utans in Borneo for the BBC’s Saving Planet Earth series, Nick will be bringing the versatility and zest he brought to his singing on Fame Academy to his co-hosting duties on Last Choir Standing.

Music mad, before he got into television Nick played in several bands, teaming up with his brother at various bars and clubs in London and the Midlands.

How did you get involved in the show?

“Well I’ve always had an involvement with music oddly enough, all my family have been involved with either dancing or music - my three sisters are dancers, my brother’s a musician. I played in bands when I left school, I play guitar myself and my brother writes musicals and I’ve been involved with producing, helping him produce those.

“I have a general love of music but without having ever had any proper training or technical ability. And I think they decided that with the fantastic wealth of technical ability that is on our judging panel - and with Myleene presenting, who is of course fabulously talented and well trained too - that they needed the man on the sofa’s view. I think I’m the guy at home who doesn’t necessarily have any particular training but loves music and I think that my job is to be there from that point of view.”

What can viewers expect from Last Choir Standing?

“I think that the first thing that viewers can expect is the unexpected.

“I wasn’t aware that it [being in a choir] was the second greatest participation activity in this country - after sport comes being a member of a choir, which is amazing. And choirs aren’t what I remember when I was at school, singing Ave Maria or whatever it happens to be. It is that of course and it is male voice choirs and it is traditional but also now you’re getting young choirs that are almost doing choral versions in the way you might put mixed tracks together and DJ-ing where you’re taking different sections of songs and putting them together to create amazing sounds. Some of the arrangements have been gob-smacking. It’s full of surprises. It’s a genuinely amazing, amazing experience.”

What are you looking for from the choirs taking part?

“What’s nice is how it actually affects you, that’s all it is. I have no specific musical training, I can’t tell whether the three part harmonies aren’t quite matching right or whether the tenors are pushing the sopranos too hard. None of that makes any sense to me. All I do is sit there and whatever makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, whether it makes me feel emotional, whether it makes me proud.”

“There are times when you sit there listening to the choirs and you think alright and then all of a sudden they move into a different rhythm or they do something and the sound just makes you smile.“

From what you’ve seen so far what’s impressed you about the choirs which have auditioned?

“There’s one particular choir where I got to know the people - this is the great thing about this show, you get to know the people involved. You get to know why it’s important to people and when they do well it just changes your whole view. You feel connected to them, you want them to go through, you want them to go through for their community. You know that it will make a massive difference to them.

“I think people will go looking to join choirs after this because the other thing is a lot of these choirs - some of these choirs are full of professional singers and some of them really aren’t - they’re people who work in a library, a maths teacher, a doctor or whatever and they all come together to make this amazing sound. There have been many moments where I’ve had a lump in my throat and got up and danced - bad uncle dancing. Myleene accused me of dancing like a bad uncle at a wedding which I think was a bit harsh, especially when I was busting some of my best shapes.“

Have you got any advice for the choirs taking part?

“Enjoy it! The great difficulty is that some of these choirs have only sung in front of 30 or 40 people and suddenly they’re in front of a studio audience, in front of television cameras, they’re in front of a television audience.

“Fear does a strange thing, it strangles your breath. Your mouth goes dry and you breathe shallow. I know that from when I work and I have an exercise I go through before I go live on a programme that puts away my nerves. Once I get into it I’m fine and I’m good because I can get through the first five minutes and then I don’t even think about it. But I can afford to be slightly breathless because I can smile and laugh and do things and play with it when I start a programme, but these guys can’t. They can’t afford to be breathless for the first second because that first note is all important. They’ve got to find a way to control their breathing and be confident and enjoy it, because if the joy doesn’t come through it doesn’t matter how good you are. If there’s no joy, if you don’t connect with people they aren’t going to vote.”

What’s your singing voice like, have you ever sung in a choir?

“There’s currently a restraining order on me ever singing in public! No, my singing voice is alright, it’s not bad and for particular types of song it’s fine, but you know I’ve done nothing to look after my voice so as long as I’m singing Tom Waits’ songs or rock n’ roll songs then I’m alright but I haven’t got a pure voice.

“I sang in the school choir. I used to have leads in the school choir but basically my voice broke and went down right into my boots and that was the end of my singing career. You don’t find many basses singing in school choirs.”

You’ve presented a number of popular shows from factual series to Saturday night entertainment, which do you prefer?

“I very specifically don’t do two types of shows the same. So for example I would never do a different type of building show, I would never do a different quiz show. I specifically try and change every time.”

Are you looking forward to working with Myleene on the show?

“She’s great Myleene, I love Myleene. We got together and worked at New Year and it was really lovely. She’s great to work with - very generous, very funny, not in the slightest bit diva-ish, she takes the mick out of my dancing, does rabbit ears behind my ears when we do photos. She’s just lovely, and she’s beautiful and she’s talented so what’s not to like.”