The young carers put their pastoral qualities to one side on Saturday to let their creative hair down, in their inaugural Christmas show.

More than 100 family and friends packed the hall at Greenshaw High School, Sutton, and cheered, whooped and booed in all the right places during the carers' wonderful performance of Susie Crooge and the Spirit of Music.

The musical was devised by project members at the Grennell Road school and the carers threw themselves into the performance with gusto, enthusiasm and no small amount of talent.

A somewhat modernised version of Dickens' festive film A Christmas Classic, its eponymous character, played by Jessica Renwick, was consumed with a Talibanesque desire to remove all things fun from the world.

According to Susie: "Singing, dancing, Stars in their Eyes, talent shows I hate them all." Which is a shame, because Susie was the ruler of the world, and before she bedded down on Christmas Eve, she ordered all music and dancing to be banned from the planet.

But even world rulers are not beyond the reach of ghosts and Susie got her comeuppance during the night. The Ghost of Christmas Past (James Laker) cleared up one of life's great mysteries by revealing himself to be Elvis I always thought he was still alive before taking Susie on her first journey.

It turned out her hatred of singing and dancing stemmed from a bad experience as a child on a talent show, when her performance of Somewhere Over the Rainbow failed to win, when she had convinced herself it had.

But young Susie (Charlon Kelly) had failed to reckon against a young Cliff Richard (Adam Hughes), who stole the show and with it the multi-million pound career.

Christmas Present, aka Bob the Builder, aka James Renwick, showed Susie the misery incurred in the household of her partner Roberta Cratchet (Laura Passingham) by the prospect of a future without music and dancing.

And when Christmas Future came along and presented Susie with a future in which children go on 10 mile walks rather than take music lessons and Roberta is sentenced to life imprisonment for singing, she realised she may have to change her ways.

This all brought us round to our happy ending a Stars in their Eyes Christmas Special, containing the immortal line: "Tonight, Matthew, we're going to be the Cheam Rotarians."

There was also the slightly odd sight of a Steps tribute act that turned out to be a male collective and turned up on stage as an all-female outfit.

And the curtain was brought down by a rousing chorus of Abba's Thank You for the Music by the whole cast.

Apart from the carers' tireless efforts, the help of countless volunteers and care centre staff, the plaudits must go to director Peter Allen and young carers worker and artistic co-ordinator Lucy Dean.

December 11, 2001 15:00