Danielle Hope (born 26 April 1992) is an English actress and singer. She is the winner of the BBC talent contest Over The Rainbow and as a result played the part of Dorothy in the Andrew Lloyd Webber production of The Wizard of Oz, which began performances in the West End at the London Palladium in February 2011.

Hope lived in Urmston, Greater Manchester and attended Knutsford High School in Cheshire, concentrating in drama and dance. Hope appeared in many of her school's musical theatre productions, playing such roles as Carmen in the musical Fame, the narrator in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Maria in West Side Story. She also appeared in We Will Rock You alongside Charlotte Wakefield from Spring Awakening

She left her part-time job as a waitress to focus on her A-level studies in Drama and Dance, and a BTEC National Award Musical Theatre. She has also studied dance privately and performed at dance festivals, including the BBC African Dance Project at Bridgewater Hall.

Lauren Samuels (born 26th March 1988) is an English singer/actress and was a contestant on the 2010 BBC UK TV series Over the Rainbow. Since appearing on the show she has gone on to appear in West End theatre, including playing the lead role of Sandy in Grease.

Samuels was born Lauren Bonner. She took the stage name "Lauren Samuels" after her older brother, Samuel.

Samuels was born with a condition that seriously affected her hearing, causing her to have to wear two hearing aids. However, her hearing completely returned to normal at the age of 18.

Samuels started ballet lessons at the age of two, began private tutorials at the Hinckley Speech and Drama Studio at seven and started singing lessons at thirteen.

Samuels studied BTEC National Diploma Performing Arts at Stratford-upon-Avon College and also studied at the Guildford School of Acting, graduating in 2009.

Samuels was a contestant on the 2010 BBC show Over the Rainbow: a talent contest to find an actress to play Dorothy in a West End revival of The Wizard of Oz. Samuels made it through to the final eleven girls who would compete for the public vote through individual performances. Despite coming in the bottom two for votes on three occasions, Samuels made it through to the final, where she ultimately came third to runner-up Sophie Evans and winner Danielle Hope.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber Kt. (born 22 March 1948) is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre.

Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage from the British Government for services to Music, seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, fourteen Ivor Novello Awards, seven Olivier Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006.

Several of his songs have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals, notably "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" and "You Must Love Me" from Evita, "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and "Memory" from Cats.

Andrew Lloyd (born 14 February 1959) is best known for coming from behind in the last lap to take the 5000m gold medal in the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games.

Lloyd was born in Colchester, Essex, England. He represented Australia at the 1988 Summer Olympics and 1985 and 1989 IAAF World Cross Country Championships. He won many prestigious Australian road races in the 1980s and 1990s including the 1983, 1984, 1986 and 1993 City to Surfs, the 1979, 1980 and 1981 Melbourne Marathons (2:26:44, 2:17:37 and 2:19:03 respectively) and the 1980 Gold Coast Marathon (2:23:02).

He also won in cross country races such as the Chiba International Cross Country in 1988.

Gordon Burns (born 10 June 1942) is a British journalist and broadcaster who hosted Granada TV's popular game show The Krypton Factor for its original 18 year run (1977–1995). From 1997 to 2011, he was the chief anchorman for the BBC regional news programme North West Tonight.

Due to his work commitments with Granada Manchester on programmes such as World in Action and Granada Reports and later BBC Manchester for North West Tonight, he has resided in Manchester for over thirty years. Burns now hosts a Sunday morning radio show for BBC Radio Manchester and BBC Radio Lancashire. He is known for a bona fide style of presenting which has made him popular with his audience.

Burns lived in Lisburn in Northern Ireland up to the age of five, and returned from London, where his father had worked as the editor of Hansard. He was educated at Dulwich College, a boys' independent school in South London, then at 13, attended Campbell College, a grammar school in Belfast.

He began his journalism career working on the Belfast Telegraph and worked on BBC radio's long-running Sports Report before joining Ulster Television as a sports editor and programme producer in 1967. Two years later, Burns began presenting the nightly news programme UTV Reports, first as a stand-in for regular frontman David Mahlowe and later as a chief anchor, during the early stages of The Troubles. In 1973, Burns joined Granada Television to anchor their nightly news programme Granada Reports and to work on the station's current affairs output, including World in Action.