When it comes to ladies with personality, they don’t come much bigger than Irish all round entertainer, Rose Marie, who has audiences eating out of her hand with her high octane voice and off the wall sense of humour.
The artist who has a lifelong career spanning music, radio, TV and stage will be at the Empire on Sunday October 18th in an evening of music and laughter from the star who remembers her very first audience in Newry, Northern Ireland being the cows on her parents’ farm!
She recalls, ‘It was whilst singing Danny Boys to the captive audience of cows I was milking that I first set my heart on singing – but not just any singer, I wanted to be a female version of Tom Jones, as singer and an entertainer.’
However, as her parents wanted their daughter to get a proper job, she tried her hand at hairdressing but accidentally cut off a piece of a woman’s ear so that was the end of that career. As Rose-Marie herself says ‘I wasn’t cut out for it!’
She’s been hailed as ‘The Irish Bette Midler’ and is sometimes so reluctant to leave the stage that she goes back on with a broom to sweep up as the audience are leaving so as to get an extra laugh!
With current record sales of over 15 million records, all 20 of her album releases going to gold or platinum status Rose-Marie is still busy performing her live shows across the UK, Ireland, Europe and even America. In fact, she is one of only a handful of UK female artists with a strong enough repertoire to pull in audiences for a one-woman show in the British Isles, Europe and also Las Vegas, from where she recently returned after 5 years.
Sunday, 18 October at 7.30pm. Tickets cost £15 and are available at www.thwaitesempiretheatre.co.uk or from the box office on 01254 685 500 Monday to Saturday 10am to 12:30pm.