The Voice UK is holding auditions in Manchester city centre next week, and there’s still time to stick your name down.
If you’d consider yourself to have some pretty impressive pipes, and you reckon you’ve got what it takes to impress the producers of one of TV’s toughest singing shows with your vocal talents, then it’s probably worth knowing that ITV is holding auditions for the next series The Voice UK next week.
And it’s not too late to sign up either, if you fancy it.
Part of The Voice franchise, and based off the original Netherlands’ show of the same name, The Voice UK first hit our TV screens back in 2012, and since then, it has gone on to become a popular rival to other singing competition shows, and staple viewing for households nationwide, drawing in millions of viewers each series.
The show’s initial blind audition round sees hopeful singers of all ages take to the stage to perform their chosen songs for the four famous judges.
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The Voice UK is holding auditions in Manchester city centre next week / Credit: ITV
Facing away from the artists, and without any previous knowledge of their looks, personalities, stage presence, dance routines, if a judge likes what they hear, then a button-press allows their chair to spin around to face the performer, which show’s they’re keen to mentor them.
If more than one judge’s chair turns, then the artist selects a coach – but if no coach turns, then the artist is sadly sent home.
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Luckily though, next week’s Manchester auditions won’t be so brutal, as it’s just in front of the show’s producers.
Heading down to Access Creative College’s Manchester campus – which is on Oxford Street in the heart of the city centre – in the hopes of finding “the next singing sensation”, producers will be holding pre auditions next Thursday 13 July, and then, if performers actually get through to the TV series from there, this is when they’ll get to perform for current judges Anne-Marie, Olly Murs, Sir Tom Jones and will.i.am.
The Voice UK judges will.i.am, Anne-Marie, Sir Tom Jones, and Olly Murrs / Credit: ITV
Members of the public from across Greater Manchester are welcome to apply, and will just need to perform one song for the producers.
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“The Voice is looking for people aged 16 and over to audition for the next series,” explained Ian Johnson – who is the Head of Music Industry Partnerships for Access Creative College.
“We have spaces available for members of the public and they need to register with me via my email and then I can send them details.
Up for it then? If you would like to audition for the next series of The Voice UK, then you’ll just need to email [email protected] to book a slot.
Featured Image – ITV
TV & Showbiz
Sir Ian McKellen pays emotional tribute to long-time friend and fellow northern actor Sir Patrick Stewart
Emily Sergeant
Sir Ian McKellen has paid an emotional tribute to his long-time friend and fellow northern actor, Sir Patrick Stewart, following his death.
Sir Patrick Stewart – who was born and bred in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, and is best-known for his theatre work alongside an illustrious 60-year screen career, taking on prominent roles in franchises such as Star Trek and X-Men – sadly passed away at the age of 86, with his death being announced publicly yesterday evening (29 October).
And now, his long-time friend and fellow northern actor, Sir Ian McKellen, has paid tribute.
Sir Patrick and Sir Ian shared the stage together countless times over their decades-long careers, but also famously starred alongside each other in the X-Men franchise, and subsequent Marvel movies, as Charles Xavier/Professor X and Magneto.
The tribute, shared across Sir Ian’s social media platforms, reads: “Before everything else, Patrick was defined by being born and bred in Yorkshire, the proud county in the north of England which he loved to the end. You could hear it in his accented voice and in the stern honesty with which he told you what he thought and felt. Yorkshiremen have no truck with half-truths or avoidance of big issues. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.
“We first met as ambitious young actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company half a century ago but we weren’t in the same productions.
“My first strong memory was a few years later, meeting him in the street in central London when he told me about an offer to take over a leading part in ‘Star Trek’. “But Patrick think of your stage career in the UK. Do you really want to risk getting lost in Hollywood for years and years?”
“Well, he took the risk and thank goodness for us all that he did, for not just his devoted Trekkies, but film and theatre audiences who marvelled at his using international celebrity to star in a string of cinema successes (‘X-Men’ of course) and in great classical plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Pinter and Beckett at Stratford-upon-Avon, in London’s West End and on Broadway.
“America was his adopted home, where he met his adored Sunny who has cared for him through sickness and health, through thick and thin.
“But he never forsook his origins: and the proudest achievement of the most respected and beloved actor of his generation on either side of the Atlantic, was his appointment as Chancellor of Huddersfield University in Yorkshire.”
Sir Patrick Stewart’s farewell performance will be in Avengers: Doomsday, which is being released in UK cinemas on 18 December 2026
Featured Image – Gage Skidmore (via Flickr)
TV & Showbiz
James Acaster reveals eerie song all Traitors contestants are forced to listen to before every roundtable
Emily Sergeant
James Acaster has revealed the eerie (and pretty surprising) song that all Traitors contestants are forced to listen to before every roundtable.
In case you’ve been living comfortably under a rock, you’ll probably be aware that comedian James Acaster is currently a contestant on this current season of BBC‘s smash-hit reality TV competition show, The Celebrity Traitors – a show that viewers in their millions are tuning into each week, with some big names on the cast.
Acaster is currently (spoiler alert… but it shouldn’t be at this point, we are several weeks in after all) one of three Traitors competing on the show, and he’s doing a pretty good job at it.
But we wonder how much of his success can be put down to the producers’ love of a certain song they like to play before every roundtable? Probably next to none, but it’s surprising to find out how much of an integral role the tune plays though.
The song we’re referring to here, it has been revealed, is ‘The Hanging Tree’ – a folk ballad made popular by The Hunger Games.
‘The Hanging Tree’, composed by James Newton Howard and Suzanne Collins, was famously sung by Jennifer Lawrence’s character Katniss Everdeen in the third instalment of the film franchise, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1.
The lyrics are as follows:
Are you, are you Coming to the tree Where they strung up a man They say who murdered three? Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met at midnight In the hanging tree
So, as you can see, the song does make reference to ‘murder’, which is a key part of The Traitors game (not real murder, of course), but even with that context, we’re still not sure why the producers are keen to play it out before every roundtable.
During a viral TikTok clip from an on-stage Q&A this week, Acaster revealed the song’s usage to the audience: “You all walk in silence down the corridor, and you all sit down, and they don’t announce it’s gonna happen.
“The first time this will completely blindside you, but they do it every single roundtable. They play that song from The Hunger Games, that ‘coming to the tree’ song. Like acapella, Jennifer Lawrence.”
He continued: “It was every f***ing time, it was the only song we heard the whole time we were in there, and all day I would have it in my head constantly, everyone would, I’d go ‘have you got coming to the tree in your head?’ and they’d go ‘yes, it’s in my head, again’.”
Viewers who watch the show may have spotted the song being played in the background or transition between certain scenes, but now it’s been revealed that the contestants hear it too.
Who would’ve thought?
Featured Image – Euan Cherry / BBC / Studio Lambert
Emily Sergeant -
7th July 2023 
