Joseph Choir Search

[Tanith Messenger]

The search is on to find the school choir that will perform live on the final show of Any Dream Will Do and at a West End charity performance.

To vote for you favourite choir go to

www.josephchoirsearch.co.uk/main

watch the videos and cast your vote!!

[stacey]

please everybody support Janvrin School Choir. A little friend of my brother is in the choir and i promised her i would ask for your support.

thank you! x

[Tanith Messenger]

Parents scupper online Joseph vote
By David Sapsted
Last Updated: 12:39am BST 03/06/2007

©copyright telegraph.co.uk


Cheating parents have forced the BBC to abandon an online competition to find a school choir to sing in its Any Dream Will Do final. A total of 843 primary schools from across the UK entered the competition, which was being run in parallel with the BBC 1 Saturday night talent show to find the new lead for the stage version of Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.


Lewis Bradley, one of the wannabe Josephs on Any Dream Will Do


Faced with mass online voting campaigns and accusations of sabotage, the BBC scrapped the planned announcement of the results on Thursday and began yesterday to judge the hundreds of entries by a selected panel.

People had been able to log on to the show's website, listen to the choirs on videos submitted by the schools, and then vote for them on a scale of one to five.

But there was soon evidence of block voting in favour of some schools and accusations that rivals were deliberately marking down the performances of the early, leading contenders.

Jo Rose, the head of music at Royal Alexandra and Albert school near Reigate, Surrey, said: "We had gone from being constantly in the top 10 to 536th. There are many choirs in the top 100 who are, quite frankly, abysmal - children shouting, forcing their voices and singing out of tune."

Some parents got local radio stations to run campaigns urging people to vote for their children's schools. A father in Ipswich, who helped to organise an online campaign for his children's school, said: "You had to do it to stand any chance of making the final 20 simply because it became obvious that everyone else was doing it."

advertisementThe process was thrown into deeper chaos because technical problems on the site stopped many people from voting at all.

In the end, the BBC had to admit defeat and stopped the voting process.

Now the final 20 schools selected by the judges will perform before Andrew Lloyd Webber and Howard Goodall who will choose which one will perform on the Any Dream Will Do final next Saturday.

The BBC yesterday apologised for the shambles. It said on the show's website that the process had been "compromised by technical difficulties and evidence of block voting, and trust in the integrity of the results may have been damaged.

"We sincerely apologise to the school choirs and those who have voted who will be disappointed with this outcome at such a late stage."