BBC Radio Lancashire Broadcast Live At Unistage - Unistage

We were delighted to welcome BBC Radio Lancashire’s Sally Naden & Steve Royle to the Unistage HQ last week, as she and her colleagues broadcast her daily radio show live from our nerve centre.

Sally and co found themselves getting hands on with our modular stage systems as she and her crew found just how easy it can be to build a stage with a combination of our frames, blocks and singular joining.

Their stage – affectionately christened ‘Danny’ – was built from the ground up at the top of her three hour show and was completed by the show’s end, including a special Unistage lectern podium, from which the live stand-up and song were performed from.

A Song & A Barrel Of Laughs

BBC Radio’s Steve Royle performs live from Unistage

“Thanks very much to the company for having us,” Royle said as he began his routine on the completed stage to a room of raucous laughter and applause, “it’s an honour to be performing on Danny – though that doesn’t exactly sound right.”

Royle’s performance was well received around the room, although he himself admits that it was a challenge to perform following a stunning operatic vocal from Little Voices’ Maestro Jane Maudsley – who connected the BBC with us to begin with.

Little Voices are a fantastic and inspiring success story, born and bred in Blackburn, but now with studios all over the country, they inspire small, focused groups of children aged 4-18 to sing and dance.

“For some children, they’re quite under-confident, they’re quite shy, which is why it works for us to have small classes, to give them that chance to come out of their shell and find their voice. It also means that very confident children who are natural performers can learn to work as part of a team and know when to share the spotlight,” Jane explains.

And if Jane’s performance on ‘Danny’ is anything to go by, Little Voices’ children are in very good hands. Jane produced a confident, soaring vocal which wowed everybody in the room and left Royle despairing. “I have to go on after her!?” he exclaimed, tongue very firmly in cheek.

You can relive Jane’s performance and hear the entire show on the BBC Radio Lancashire iPlayer web application for the next three weeks here. Jane and Steve’s performances begin at 2:23:00.

Overall, the morning was a wonderful success and our owner and stage king Steve Huckle was left beaming in pride: “It’s been an absolute pleasure and privilege to welcome the BBC and Jane into our tiny corner of the universe today,” he pauses, a mischievous gleam popping into his eye, “we’re so pleased they would choose a company with such a fantastic staging product.”

Unistage Managing Director Steve Huckle watches on as Sally & Steve perform their show.

“Oh! Does that company have a name, Steve?” Royle barbed.

“It’s called Unistage,” Huckle sounded the day off right.
We’re proud to continue to partner with Little Voices and thank Jane very much for organising the day. We hope to continue to work strongly with Little Voices in the coming future and see more and more little voices find who their are – maybe on a Unistage stage!