Undeterred by I Can't Sing! flop

Harry Hill is set to make a new West End musical, less than two years after his X Factor show I Can't Sing! flopped.

The comedian is remaining tight-lipped about the project, but says it is another idea inspired by TV.

And he says he 'learned a lot' from I Can't Sing! – which closed in May last year after running for just six weeks at the London Palladium. The production was blighted by technical problems, and both Hill and Simon Cowell said the mistake was going straight into one of the capital's biggest theatres.

He will again be working with his long-term musical collaborator Steve Brown  – the force behind Hill's backing band The Caterers, with whom he wrote 19 original songs for the X-Factor musical.

Hill broke the news on the set of the BBC Christmas special Professor Branestawm Returns, where he plays the title character.

'I think I'm gong to be writing a new musical, as well, with Steve Brown and a few others,' he said.

'I don't think I can really talk about it because it's not been sorted out. It's just happened in the last couple of weeks. But it's another TV thing that we can send up again.

Of his experiences with I Can't Sing!, the former TV Burp host said: 'It was great fun. Well, it's complicated there are lots of reasons it didn't run I think primarily we we just in too big a venue. But I learned a lot and I hope to apply that to the new venture.'

His collaborator Brown is an accomplished composer who also appeared as Glenn Ponder on Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge – and is the father of stand-up comedian Alfie Brown.

Yesterday, Chortle revealed that Hill was working on a panel show for ITV, though he still wasn't sure what format it would take.

Published: 5 Dec 2015