That's Really Super, SuperClaire

Blog readers of a certain age will have memories – fond or otherwise – of It’s ‘Orrible Being In Love (When You’re Eight and a Half), the solitary hit single from Claire and Friends, issued by BBC records in 1986 and reaching the dizzying heights of number 13 in the UK singles chart in July of that year.

But did you know that Claire Usher (the apparently friendless Claire) also issued a full-length album? No, nor did I. Until a fortnight ago, that is.

Now I am the proud owner of a copy of SuperClaire, titled after her second single Superman (apparently a continuation of the ‘Orrible Being In Love story) and also containing Big Sister, the flip side to her hit. And it should come as no surprise that the man behind this ghastly project was one Michael Coleman, the Michael of Brian and Michael, of Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs fame, and also at least partly responsible for the dreadful St. Winifred's School Choir hit There’s No One Quite Like Grandma.

Stockport schoolgirl Claire Usher was ‘discovered’ by Coleman and producer Kevin Parrott (the Brian of Brian and Michael) when she was a pupil at St Winifred’s. The hit-making duo had her record a demo of Coleman’s song about a childhood crush, which Usher’s mum submitted to a talent-spotting feature on the BBC-TV children's programme Saturday Superstore, where – apparently - it beat a thousand other entries. After recording SuperClaire she appeared on one further 45, Welephant with the Singing Fireman, Graham Walker, before turning her back on fame for good.

Winning the show was exciting, she says, but her parents helped keep her feet on the ground. When she was invited to come back on the show a year later to hand over her trophy to the next winner, she turned them down because she had a netball match she could not miss as she was captain.

In adulthood, Claire Usher obtained a degree in drama and became a dancer, appearing in the stage show Riverdance on Broadway in 2000, and in the show's UK tour. She later wrote songs for indie pop band Shrag before becoming a teacher. Now married and living in Manchester with a daughter of her own, Claire Usher-McMorrow is that rarest of things, a former child star who is happy to be famous no longer. According to an article in The Guardian, every so often she gets a call from Where Are They Now-type shows, which she declines to go on because ‘you end up looking like a right idiot’. She also confided that she had no ambitions to enter her own child into a talent contest. ‘I can't imagine – to put your child up there to be criticised. Ugh… I'd like her to be the world champion of tiddlywinks. Become good at something totally random.’

Here are a couple of tracks from the wonderfully naff SuperClaire: Big Sister and her cover of the Mary Wells hit My Guy. Enjoy!

Download Sister HERE

Download Guy HERE