15/12/2015 The One Show

Hello and welcome to The One Show, with Matt Baker...

On tonight's show, it's the Christmas collaboration that

Three swoonsome gents - their words, not ours!

And an international singing sensation.

Now let's remind ourselves what they saw in her.

# The minute you walked in the joint...

Please welcome Dame Shirley Bassey and Blake, also known as Ollie,

There is a lot of Albert tonight. Lovely to see you. It was a special

night, a big celebration the first night you met Dame Shirley Bassey.

It was a significant milestone birthday to you. I don't know if we

are allowed to say. How did this come about? It was my 70th birthday.

Somebody said, we have a surprise for you. There was a lake singing

happy birthday to me. We jumped out of a cake. Things progressed from

there and we look forward to the Christmas Song you will be doing.

Christmas hits are probably the last things on the mind of anybody

Back in 2009 we reported from Cockermouth on floods so severe

We would have liked to have returned for different reasons

but to paraphrase one of Dame Shirley's songs,

In Cumbria, the police declare a major incident. The Army has been

called in to evacuate people in Cumbria. More rain overnight and the

worst is yet to come. The second time in the last six years the

people here have suffered the effects of devastating floods. It is

amazing to think just a week ago, this high street was a river. How

have the people bounced back? Well, with a food festival. The original

taste of Cumbria food festival occurs every summer and was born out

of the 2009 floods to help the local community and surrounding villages

get back to normal. This time it has been specially organised a Christmas

to help them once again. For the retailers here just before

Christmas, it is the most important time of the year? Absolutely, if

your business is flooded three weeks before Christmas, lots of wouldn't

have had the critical, critical Christmas trade. What do you think?

It is brilliant. Has anybody thought I have had it with Cockermouth, I am

heading the higher land? No, we are still here. The farm has affected

been as well. Even the sheep don't like it. One thing I love about

Cumbrians is it is an old-fashioned community spirit. It is lovely. It

has been a difficult week, but everyone has come together. A lot of

people have come and it is amazing how fast they have turned the street

around. People can appeal to have stuff sent to the flood victims. We

have stuff in the back going to them later today. Despite the massive

show of support, there are areas of the region where the worst effects

of the Flood still being felt. This lady runs the flood volunteer Centre

in Penrith, where donated food and clothes are sent to the most

vulnerable. They are all volunteers, taking time from their own jobs to

help out? Yes, we're all volunteers, no one gets paid. Some of them have

been here from last week for 12 hours a day. How can I help? You can

get the van loaded it is going to Appleby. Let's do it. Just over 40

miles away, Appleby has only just become fully accessible after the

main bridge was reopened. The supplies coming from Penrith should

go some way to make Christmas with the people who live and work here, a

touch more variable. What happened with your business and property? My

business was flooded up to four foot and I have lost probably 90% of my

products. What is that? Babywear. I understand you have had a few

problems? Yes, lost my business. It is a cafe. I have seen my ladies

this morning in here. It is important, there are strong people

and weak people. Everyone has pulled together because of the strong

people and I am really grateful. You are quite a bit stronger than you

think you are. I am not sure about that. Two word spring to mind,

positivity and resilience. I have got my Christmas purchases and this

is going toward getting the people of Cumbria back on their feet for

the festive season. Merry Christmas. That is a fine

example about what is great about Great Britain. People pull together

when they need to. You had a near miss in North Wales? We were doing a

gig in Llandudno. A roof was ripped off a garage. You could barely walk

in the wind and then it went north. We were in Snowdonia the next day,

driving through the park. There was water coming over the bonnet. So to

be up there in the eye of the storm must have been terrifying. Matt was

in a nativity play this morning? I was watching one. I was watching my

daughter. Lots of singing in schools this year and Christmas concerts,

but Dame Shirley you weren't particularly encouraged to sing in

school? You told us this brilliant story. That is hard to believe! I

was in the school choir and on the first day, I was at the front. The

teacher said, you are a bit loud, go in the second row. I did and I was

still allowed. Third row, fourth and fifth. I couldn't go anywhere else

except to go out into the corridor. Which I did! I went out in the

corridor and I was singing from the corridor. Unbelievable. At what

point did it turn around and you realise that this is what you are

meant to do? I was singing in a working man's club on a Saturday and

because I was 15, it was the only time I could sing at this club

because they allowed wives to go. Otherwise it was just the men.

Sitting and having a drink was a Welshman and he was putting on a

show in London. He was a talent scout. He came after the show and he

said, I would love you to come to London to audition for this part in

this show that they are putting on. I said, I don't know, you will have

to go and talk to my mother. Of course, you are only 15. The next

day he turned up. My mother said yes, she can go to London but she

has to have a chaperone. I took another 15-year-old friend of mine.

215-year-olds in London! Not exactly a chaperone? No, she was hopeless. I

was behind the piano when these two gentleman came in and I had to sing

for them. They wouldn't come from behind the piano. Now I am nervous,

afraid because being told I was too loud, go back, go back when I was in

the school choir. I just signed. They could only see my head from

behind the piano. But that was enough. The performances you have

done all over the world. This is your first time here on the One

Show. You have been on the BBC since the 1960s. This is a show similar to

The One Show in 1966 with A Lot Of Living To Do.

When you see that, right after the back of the conversation we just

had, about a little girl frightened to come from behind the piano, what

are you see when you put the two together like that? Another woman.

It is not me. Really, you feel that? Yes, when I am performing to when I

am sat at home in my tracksuit like a couch potato. Those dance moves

you just saw, come out one in a while. Surely that tracksuit has got

sequins on it? No. This next film contains bottles of Oh Be Joyful.

Christmas is a time for enjoying some nice food. For me, Nigel

Slater, it is about juicy satsumas, the crunch of a knowing it is bad

for you cheese football. A huge turkey dinner with more disasters.

The Christmas episode of EastEnders. But following the big turkey dinner,

one thing that makes it complete is a traditional Christmas pudding. I

have come down to the County of Devon, home to Mock the week's Andy

Parsons to meet two wonderful ladies with their own winning Christmas

pudding recipe and they will show me how to make it. Break the nutmeg in

there. It is a different to when mother used to make them. April and

June grew up in rural Dartmoor. They were the last 15 children and having

run out of names, their parents named them after the month in which

they were born. That smells delicious. We have raisins,

sultanas, cherries, nutmeg included. Lemon rind. In a minute I will put

in a little drop of Oh Be Joyful, which is brandy. I like putting it

in my pudding, I don't like setting fire to it on Christmas Day. I

thought you said, when you said Woosh, I thought you meant mixing it

up. Just like mother used to make, beautiful. Where does it go now? In

the basin. As well as being proud of their Christmas pudding, they are

proud of their Devonian dialect, which they acknowledge is in

decline. In our areas, many of what we call, newcomers, have arrived and

they talk differently. So you try to use your telephone voice and talk

correctly. Amongst your family, you were one of 15, so amongst that

family you must have used words because you knew they would be

understood. They came naturally, you don't stop and think about them, it

is what he grew up saying and everyone else in the area was the

same. Happily, there are many people trying to keep the traditional way

of speaking alive. A local competition was run to find the

person with the best Devon dialect and the current champion is April's

son. It is drawing out some Yit. It is drawing out now. I am going to

ask you what you needed to do to win? I just spoke with natural, like

what I do when I am at home and with my farming friends and stuff. I

didn't try to put on anything, I just spoke like I naturally did. The

broad dialect is the way you would normally speak? I would say so. It

is still alive and well. More importantly, how is the Christmas

pudding? Proof of the pudding is in the eating. April, June, may I steal

a march on new! What you're August pudding should be served with?

Clotted cream, with home-made butter and cream. No problem with

cholesterol back in our day. It hasn't done you any harm? Time for

the judging. I think you have got a very good bake. Your flavours work

really well. Your nutmeg, just the right amount. I have got to say,

very good bake. Well done. I don't know what Mary with link. Not bad.

Great to see them keeping the old Devonshire dialect alive.

And we've got some other people here who are just as dedicated

to keeping the flames of their own dialects burning bright.

So, Dame Shirley, what we've done is we've asked them to translate

some of your lyrics into their own regional dialect.

See if you can work out which songs they are from.

From Lancashire. A new run time... -- in your own time.

Heaw mun ever I start to tell thi heaw gradely courtin' can be?

Heaw mun ever I start to tell thi heaw gradely courtin' can be?

May be how sweet something can be? May be? Love story? Let us here

at... # Where do I begin to tell the story

of how sweet a love can be? I am from Norfolk. This is the

clue... This is from one of your famous Bond

songs, Dame Shirley. Bootiful wads, he'll

mardle down yer lug. Now... Lugs... That could mean

years. I have done three Bond films. Lugs?

Bootiful wads, he'll mardle down yer lug.

What is gold? Goldfinger! Golden words he will pour in your ear. And

we finally have Brendan. I am from the Black Country. This is from

track on the album, The Performance. Muthas blarted, thowd mon went ahrt

fossickin fer thowd wench. Oh, no! Here it comes! Mothers wept, fathers

went out searching for a wife. Nice medley! Thank you, Brendan. There is

a brand-new album in that one! On Friday you're releasing your

version of The Christmas Song. By coincidence, even before

we knew you were coming in, we'd asked Carrie to tell us

the story behind it. We might complain about Christmas,

that it comes to soon ridges to commercial but I would defy you to

hear this and not feel warm and fuzzy... Chestnuts Roasting on an

Open Fire. Jack Frost nipping on your nose. This is a song that my

father, Mel Torme, wrote in 1955. It is really called The Christmas Song,

the song is timeless, it is not religious. It is wonderfully

secular. And like a lot of great Christmas popular songs. James is a

jazz singer and broadcaster. Welcome to another jam-packed edition... As

the son of American musician Mel Torme and the British actress

Janette Scott, he grew up singing The Christmas Song with his father

at home in Los Angeles every year. Surprisingly, the song started life

on a boiling hot summers day. My dad went over to the house of his

writing partner, Bob Wells. There was no sign of him. Nowhere to be

seen. I father walked into his parlour with the piano and on the

piano was a spiral pad. With four lines scribbled down. In pencil. And

when Bob Wells finally appeared, he said, what is this? And he said, you

know, I am so hot today, and I thought that if I could just write

some kind of poetry about the wintertime, it would help me cool

down. And my dad looked at it and he said, I think there is something

here. And about 40 minutes later, that song was born. They were so

excited about the song they rushed to play at to a good friend of

theirs, Nat King Cole. When they were done with the first time they

said play it again and they played it one more time and before they

could get through, he said, that is my song! That is my song! And the

rest is history. It was written in 45 and released in 46 and that was

the year that the lot of the soldiers were coming home for the

first peacetime crispness so they would hear that song and it became

for the rest of their lives this anthem, this symbol of peacetime

crispness and the war being over. Every year ever since, new versions

are recorded. It is estimated to have earned over $90 million in

royalties. How many people have covered it? We used to make fun of

my dad because it would ask and he would say, I think there have been

1734 and we would say, that is our address! James himself is taking on

his father 's song. Many times, many ways... Merry Christmas... To you...

It is tipping the hat to Mel Torme. It fills me with pride and I think

my father would be smiling if he could hear this version. And so to

the version of Dame Shirley Bassey and Blake. Chestnuts Roasting on an

Open Fire.... Jack Frost nipping on your nose.... Yuletide carols being

sung by a choir... And folks dressed APPLAUSE.

We heard earlier how you met. He sent a letter with three choices.

And what happened? We knew that we had to pick an iconic song for this

iconic voice and this is our first chance and one chance to record a

Christmas song with Dame Shirley so it had to be right and that is why

it was three. Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas was one, oh holy

night, and The Christmas Song. She picked that one. It was quite

important for you? Yes, I live in Monte Carlo. I sent you the CD. And

I chose chestnuts! You always wanted to record a Christmas song. Up until

now, the record label was not keen but sadly this was the year? --

suddenly. I have been with if you record companies and each one of

them never wanted me to do an album, they never brought it up. You were

made for Christmas! It never came to be, how does it feel, having the

opportunity? I jumped at the chance. Because, taking of something on my

bucket list... We have heard the story of all of those words coming

about and words are incredibly important for you, the way that you

look at a song and managed to tell that story. When you see the lyrics,

what do you see and how do you tell the story? I don't know. I just look

at it and I open my mouth. Outcomes this sound! Aid is not very

considered? I do not say, I am going to do it this way or that. I'd just

try it with the piano. And... Whatever... And I never do it the

same way twice. That is why I hate doing playback because I never sing

at the same tempo. It is always faster or slower. It was fascinating

for us to sing with Dame Shirley and singing live, but salute mentality

that every time it is different. -- that solo. That always keeps you on

your toes. And recording in your flat! Having Dame Shirley having a

cup of tea? Yes, I did a lot of cleaning up! Champagne and caviar!

Everything is in the cupboards! It must have been a dream for all of

you, to have a Christmas number one. That'll be a first for you. The key

is to go out and buy this on Friday! It would be an amazing finish to an

incredible year. And if you can't wait that

long, Blake's album, Well, you're hoping for a number one

this year but there's going to be I don't know, but? We will show you!

There is the NHS quire... -- Choir. And there is The four Sopranos,

featuring the Queen. Apparently the Queen has a beautiful

voice! Carrie is with us. How many singles

must you sell to get the number one? It is normally about 100,000...

Well, last year's number one was Something I Need

But compare that to the Military Wives just three years earlier,

and they sold more than double that amount - 556,000 copies.

There is a huge difference! It would be great to see a Christmas song

going to the number one spot because it has been ages since we have had a

Christmas themed song as the Christmas number one! I agree! In a

1950s, 63 number ones and only 13 are about Christmas. The last one on

the Christmas theme was 25 years ago. Cliff Richard. Goodness, the!

-- goodness me! And even something like East 17! There have been some

very near misses! We suggested that one to Dame Shirley!

Thanks so much to Dame Shirley Bassey and Blake.

We'll be back tomorrow with Kylie Minogue,

Your favourite professor is back, and this time there's trouble.

If only there were some way I could get rid of him once and for all.