Seeing that I can't sing to save my life, it wasn't the greatest idea to volunteer for the role of 'leading female' in the school musical. A masterpiece of dimensions, penned by the Andrew Lloyd Webber wannabe in our drama class. The storyline was like a cross between "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The Phantom of the Opera". Nevermind that the guy in question had a rather public crush on me, so considering he was in charge of casting he didn't care that I carried less of a tune than an average cat. He said, "It's your soul that matters, they'll understand." I could buy that, my soul wasn't too bad, I thought, but how would it help my singing?

I was on the hate-list of every female in class, especially as every single one of'em had a better singing voice than I did. It didn't help that Mr Genius was a rather handsome chap either, but it did give said females some joy that he cast Quasimodo as the leading male. He couldn't sing particularly well either, he was just unattractive enough so I wouldn't end up choosing him over Mr Genius. Of course, what Mr Genius didn't know was that I was already spoken for - but the man in question was 8 years older than I was, and I hadn't even told my mother of his existence.

But back to the story.

One week from opening night, I was nowhere near convinced that I'd get away with sounding like a strangled ostrich. Mr Genius reassured me that I shouldn't worry, and because he was so concerned with my concern, so to speak, he wanted to give me - as he put it - private lessons. I thought this meant he actually knew a thing or two about vocal training, but realised as soon as I stepped into his parents' house that he had other intentions for my mouth that evening. Having made him realise he wasn't going anywhere near my mouth 'with that', I said it was rather odd that I was doing a musical with a voice like thinning hair - and he eventually said, "I have the solution."

His 'solution' was called Angela and his sister. A senior at some university where they practiced singing every day for 50 hours. At least. Not only did she have a fantastic voice, she made Whitney Houston sound like, well, me. Mr Genius here said he had made her sing all my parts, he could play a CD and all I had to do was mime. Problem was, everyone had heard me sing. He had a solution for that too; That I had clearly been pretending to be bad, wanting to surprise everyone for opening night. I'd lied about more complicated things, so I was up for it.

Opening night, no previews of course, and I was centre stage, in front of about 200 people, ready to mime my heart out. It went really well for about 20 minutes. Then, right in the middle of a big-arse note, the CD the bastard had brought had a scratch. I remember the words still: "Time is up *skip* time is up *skip* time is up *skip* time is up..." Time really was up. I was officially Milli Vanilli. I turned royal red, looked across the room towards Mr Genius that looked more and more like Mr Loser, that desperately tried to save the moment. No luck.

In short, there was silence and confusion, followed by roaring laughter - shortly followed by loud boos. Needless to say, I had to hand my leading lady role over to a blonde with boobs the size of my head and the ability to carry a tune. And I spent the rest of the school year locked in the bathroom and wiping 'loser' off of my desk.

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