Voice coach Sheila Harrod has a reputation for dealing out tough love to her pupils, but her ‘children’ as she calls them, receive old school speciality teaching that puts them firmly on the first step of their chosen career path.

On Saturday, December 20, Sheila will be leading her team of 20 singers from the Kentwood Junior Choir in the first festive show ever presented by the Kentwood Kids, called It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas, at Swindon’s Arts Centre.

Sheila has taught singing and piano for 50 years and has seen many changes in the music industry throughout that time. She feels very strongly that popular TV talent shows of today are creating an epidemic amongst the young people that can only result in disappointment for many as there are not enough drama school places or jobs in the West End.

“I blame the television, it has a lot to answer for,” said Sheila. “It’s the talent shows. In Swindon we do have a lot of theatre schools offering singing, dance and drama all under one roof, but they are not always specialists, and once the youngsters move into the big ocean of London, they will find they are small fish in a very big pool with a lot of people more talented than they are.”

Sheila says she impresses on all her students the importance of having an academic back-up or alternative career.

“I always tell my students to have a go, but I am a realist. I am strict and give them tough love because they have to know that it will not be handed to them on a plate. But I don’t like the word failure, and with me they get a voice specialist, I am both voice coach and piano teacher. I specialise in musical theatre but I encourage all of them to sing from the soul.”

Sheila has had many former pupils go on to make music their career, including Rachel Sparrow who took the lead in Children of Eden at the West End.

All 20 junior singers will be singing their hearts out showcasing numbers such as Twelve Days of Christmas with narration from John Marshall, the story of the nativity in jazz form, and a panto sequence written especially for Sheila and Kentwood by Gordon Talbot.

Dancers from the Gemma Short Dance School will be joining the show and Gemma will be overseeing the choreography which Sheila calls choral-ography when it comes to the choir.

There are a number of Christmas solos in the show, including young Oliver Hosier singing In Summer from Frozen, and Ruby Bees singing Let It Go also from Frozen. Lauren Durrant takes on the mighty Nessun Dorma and the finale is a magical sing-a-long of all things Christmas from Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman to Little Drummer Boy and Jingle Bells. The show starts at the Arts Centre at 7pm. Tickets are £12 from 01793 528144. – Flicky Harrison