I don't know if this is confirmed, as it hasn't been mentioned elsewhere, but according to a tweet from John Honeywell @captgreybeard, Lee will be part of the entertainment for P&O Cruises this autumn. I dug a bit further, and found he will be appearing with the West End Men on a 12 night cruise to the Canaries on the Ventura! Out of my price range, I'm afraid.

He's in good company - I see they have Michael Ball on a later cruise.

//www.gocruisewithjane.co.uk/2013/08/po-cruises-announce-star-studded-cruises/

Yay - he finally made it to the big cruise ship from the ferry!

ETA: It looks official: Another linky thing:

http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/captain-greybeard/2013/08/the-stars-will-be-shining-for-.html

Thanks A/Liz, nice little gig and cruise for the West End Men and Lee could probably do with a holiday at present. He'll probably miss the rowdy drunks though from his ferry days, on the other hand ..... . Now how's Lee going to join the cruise which they say starts on the 29 Sept. as he's doing his own show at Cheltenham Town Hall that night, perhaps James Bond will helicopter him in at a later date like the Queen at the Olympics .
Never been to The Canaries!

Hmmm, interesting .... I thought that date looked familiar! That's why I was a bit cautious at first about it being official .....

Also, we were told that WEM weren't doing any more concerts in 2013. Maybe P&O have jumped the gun?

Or, another thought - maybe the entertainment doesn't start for a day or two (never having been on a cruise, I wouldn't know), so he could fly out and join them at their first port of call.

Who knows? I give up!

All together now..
Somewhere, beyond the sea..........

Good one Cassie! I have just read the blog and was surprised as he is already booked for that date but maybe it has just come up and they can all fit it in. I doubt whether entertainment starts the first day at sea anyway so he should have time to join ship.

Interesting!

I wonder if Lee is definitely confirmed as part of the WEM line-up for this gig? Perhaps they are just throwing his name around since he was involved in all the earlier WEM engagements?

Note to self - don't book cruise just yet! [joking of course!]

That makes sense Greycat, even without Lee those lucky travellers will get a fine show with the other West End Men.

If you notice it is for 2014 !!!!!!

Don't think so, Maggie - definitely this year!

I'm with you Michelle, if you look at the above P&O Cruises Announcement (and the booking sites for these cruises - not that I'm going!) it says West End Men on cruise departing 29 September 2013 and the other performers are also on cruises for this year.

Having been on many cruises, usually the visiting guest acts only join the ship from a port of call at some point during the cruise so not necessarily from day1.This would give Lee time to perform at Cheltenham,pack and fly out to meet the ship somewhere.Now off to book my next cruise......

It says 2014 at the top of thepage. and Twitter ?

P&O's page for this sailing (N325) is for Sept. 29, 2013 and it has the WEM advertised on that page:
http://www.pocruises.com/n325

I see Lee's FB page has now confirmed that he will be joining the Ventura for part of its cruise:

"We are now able to confirm for you that Lee will be joining the cruise ship VENTURA on the last leg of its Mediterranean cruise from 8-11 October, bringing the ship from Lisbon back to Southampton. The ship is owned by P&O Cruise Line. The show in which Lee will perform will be a version of 'West End Men' - we don't yet know who the other performers will be."

He'll have time for a few WEM rehearsals after the Cheltenham concert before joining the ship! It'll be interesting to see who the other WEM will be

I see someone asked on FB about who would be joining Lee for this WEM performance and has been told that "it will be a stripped back West End Men line-up - but the producers have not yet let us know who this will be. We will post it on here as soon as we know of course."

Interesting! Presumably, this means it will back to three WEM plus female guest? Or fewer? Assuming, of course, that the "stripped back" is referring to number of performers and not something else!!! Lee did say (at The Pheasantry) that 'The West End Men' sounds like a strip show

Don't think there'd be any complaints if there was some stripping involved!

Will be interesting to see what they do for this show. Bit surprised it's not just Lee doing his solo show tbh.

Who knows? Maybe 'stripped back' means the show will be The West End Man!!!

been trying to come up with a reason to get on that sailing imagine sitting in the swimming pool and bumping into lee oh a girl can dream ......

but i will not be sailing so i will wait here for all your reviews

I see from FB that David Thaxton and Glenn Carter will be Lee's fellow WEM for the Ventura gig.

Lucky passengers

Oh to be a stowaway for this!

Nice line-up! With just three of them, hope that means they'll get more solos.

I found this article reviewing a recent Canary Island cruise by the Ventura:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-2422192/Cruise-holidays-A-teenager-sets-sail-Canary-Islands-holiday-sea.html

If you scroll down, the last photo shows the theatre where Lee will presumably be performing - it's bigger than I imagined a theatre on a ship would be!

And nice to see that Lee gets a little mention in the info at the bottom of the article on the next Ventura cruise to the Canaries

Rehearsals for the WEM cruise have started, and Glenn has just tweeted a pic. How is it that I'm happy just to look at the back of his head? (Lee's, not Glenn's!)

http://t.co/hoD1G8YpNQ

Curls rule!!!

Nice pic!

And even better...Glenn has tweeted a little video of Lee singing!

http://t.co/KxCoPgBZRx

Thanks for those links A Liz & Greycat.
Great vid of Lee singing - so much emotion. Phew!

Well, I've tried Internet Explorer and Google Chrome and the video won't open for me. I've been out all day, though, so it could have been removed by now. Anyone any ideas?

In the meantime, there's another rehearsal pic:

http://t.co/G8XwG8YnQN

It won't open for me either dammit

I only get the sound for the first 50 secs. also the picture and sound are out of sync, never mind, it was nice of Glen to post it, at least I can see Lee and imagine the sound.

I'm using Mozilla Firefox and the video is playing more or less OK for me - the sound and picture are slightly out of synch but not too bad. The vid was rather 'sticky' for me on the first play but got better on repeat plays. Hope others can get it to work!!!

Yes, it was out of sync but I can live with that!

It seemed to play OK for me. Lee can certainly carry a tune!

When I play it, the picture is distorted so it is too narrow. Lee is squashed and twice as thin as he should be! I have had the sound problems you describe too.

I've tried Firefox now and still nothing, just a blank screen. At least that's an improvement on the others, when it told me it was unavailable.

*ahem* Copy of the vid for downloading:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bqdo91f3bod21yu/WEM%20rehearsal_LM.mp4

Thanks for sharing that with us.

Sorry! Have deleted that previous file linked. Here's a MUCH better one, thanks to a clever StageLoppy friend!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8cisabkr88v57zz/Fix%20You_rehearsal.mp4

Thank you - look at the emotion even in rehearsal!

Thanks PKP and your Stageloppy friend. Lee has always said in concerts that Fix You means something to him, and it shows

Ooh, that's much better. He was looking worryingly thin on that other vid!

Lovely, thank you PKP and friend

I assume Lee & co will be doing their first WEM shows on the Ventura today - hope all goes well!!!

Hopefully, we'll get some feedback on the shows on the OFB page. I'll also keep an eye on this page (Cruise Critic) for any reviews

Heehee!

https://twitter.com/lolixxx/status/388029273006936064

Is she visually impaired?????

Have to say that while I don't fancy David Thaxton as such, he's a really lovely man. Met him in June during the WEM run.

May have got it wrong but did this film not appear before when Lee was rehersing WEM. ? I think he looks as if he has a bad cold and he sounds as if he is having trouble with the voice ?

Lee's hair is looking longer in the vid, so I'd say it was filmed a few days ago. There were a couple of vids of the previous WEM rehearsals, but I'm pretty sure this isn't one of them.

I'm intrigued as to what song Lee and David were singing.

Maggie, it is just a bad quality video Glen has done on his
phone with the sound very distorted.

Since they only had two days rehearsal for the Ventura gigs, it seems unlikely that there would be any fresh songs in the set. I think this week's gigs would just be a cut down (50 minute) version of the Vaudeville set. Hopefully, we will hear a bit more at some point

http://instagram.com/p/fUd-STmKgC/#

Thanks for the photo Jazzylou - nice!

Interesting that the guy pictured with Lee is a dancer for whom this cruise seems to have been his very first professional job! He should have had plenty to talk about with Lee :)

Here's a couple more pics fom the Ventura:

https://twitter.com/laurakidd90/status/388651742248046592/photo/1

https://twitter.com/mattytude/status/388608245859749888/photo/1

Seems like they enjoyed themselves!

There are 2 lovely photos posted today by passengers on the Ventura
one of Lee from @Clare_MartinxXx and the other posted by
@Annabellleee_X of Lee, David and Glen.

Perhaps someone would like to do a link.