Paul O'Grady - currently terrifying audiences as the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - is to present the Carlton TV best musical prize at this year's Evening Standard Theatre Awards.
O'Grady, 47, has recovered from his heart attack in April to make a gloriously dastardly comeback in the hit West End show.
However the man who created Lily Savage confesses that spending hours in make-up, then performing and listening to Chitty's songs nearly every day of the week is taking a heavy toll.
"I tell you, I'm going round the Chitty Chitty bend. I wake up every morning singing songs from the show. They are all stuck in my head and sometimes I think, 'Dear God, just save me from this insanity'."
Such is the quality of new musicals in the West End this year that the enormously popular and technologically breathtaking Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has not even made the shortlist for Carlton TV Best Musical.
"There's so much competition," said Mr O' Grady: "I'm amazed Taboo isn't nominated too."
The three shows that made the shortlist are all outstanding.
First up is My One And Only, which delighted audiences at the Piccadilly Theatre with its peerless evocation of the roaring Twenties and George Gershwin's catalogue of immortal show tunes. It boasts brilliant choreography and starring performances from Janie Dee and Tim Flavin.
Then there is Lord Lloyd-Webber's great musical gamble, Bombay Dreams. Although a radical new departure for the West End, the Bollywood show has proved irresistible to audiences, which love the story of divided loyalties in the Bombay film industry and fantastic songs such as Chaiyya Chaiyya and Shakalaka Bombs. The Bombay Dreams box office at the Apollo Victoria now takes up to £500,000 a week.
The final contender is, sadly, not having nearly such a good time at the box office - despite a healthy dose of that perennial crowd-puller, nudity.
The Full Monty closes on Saturday, but two days later it could scoop an Evening Standard Theatre Award. The show takes the famous film of the same name and transfers the action to Buffalo, upstate New York.
O'Grady said The Full Monty is a "brilliant musical". He added: "I first saw it on Broadway and then I went to the opening night here at The Prince of Wales Theatre. It's great, and I'm surprised a British producer didn't snap it up and make it into a musical before the Americans did."
- The Evening Standard Theatre Awards will be presented at a lunchtime ceremony at The Savoy on 25 November and broadcast by Carlton Television at 11.30pm on Thursday, 28 November.
