Exclusive: Fat Friends the Musical to premiere in Leeds this year

A slimming club where the members confessed their inner most secrets while desperately try to shed a few more pounds proved a TV ratings winner. And now Fat Friends, created by Yorkshire screenwriter Kay Mellor, is about to get a new lease of life as a musical.
The TV cast of Fat FriendsThe TV cast of Fat Friends
The TV cast of Fat Friends

Starring Jodie Prenger, Leeds Grand Theatre will play host to the world premiere of the show, written by Nicholas Lloyd Webber, son of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, in November before it heads out on a national tour.

Mellor said she decided to create the musical because of the enduring popularity of the original show, which ran for four series on ITV from 2000 to 2005,

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“About once or twice a week I get asked if Fat Friends is going to come back on the television,” said Mellor. “I’m always flattered that people loved the characters and premise. It ran for four series with a Christmas special and although I felt it had run its course, I always secretly thought there could be a musical using those characters.”

Jodie PrengerJodie Prenger
Jodie Prenger

The Leeds born writer cut her teeth on Coronation Street and the hospital set drama Children’s Ward before making her name with red light district drama Band of Gold in 1995. She went on to create and write the series Playing The Field, Strictly Confidential, The Syndicate and In The Club. Fat Friends, however, is one of the most fondly remembered television series of her long career.

The original show starred Mellor’s daughter Gaynor Faye, Ruth Jones and James Corden, Full details of the musical are being kept under wraps, but like the series it will explore how being overweight is used an excuse for not living their lives to the full.

“It’s a universal story, I think now more than ever,” said Mellor. “Everyone is on a diet, or knows someone who is, that’s why people loved the show.

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“The musical has been a passion project for a long time now. Every time I get a week or a few days off, I hop on a train and head down to London to Nick’s (Lloyd Webber) studio. It’s the first time I’ve written a musical and it’s absolutely wonderful at this point in my career to have found something that is exciting and new and that I love.”

Jodie PrengerJodie Prenger
Jodie Prenger

When the show comes to Leeds Grand Theatre, it will be the venue’s second world premiere in recent years, the Gary Barlow-Tim Firth musical The Girls having opened at the Leeds theatre in 2015.

Mellor said: “This is where I wanted it to open, here in Leeds. It’s set in Headingley, I live in Leeds, I want Leeds people to be the first to see it. I’m really pleased that it’s going to tour nationally, but wherever it goes, Fat Friends The Musical will have had its world premiere in Leeds. That’s what really thrills me.”

Mellor added that she’s been workshopping the musical in London for the past couple of years, and industry insiders believe she could soon be adding this to her list of hits.

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She said: “There’s something so powerful and almost magical about the addition of music. I really love learning about all this new stuff at this stage of my career. I now know what a middle eight is and when we started I thought an allegro was a car.”

Tickets for Fat Friends the Musical, which opens at Leeds Grand on November 7 and runs until December 2, go on sale to priority members today and on general sale on January 25. 0844 8482 700.