Performing has been a constant in Abi Roberts' life.

Her father, Chris, was a guitarist on the seminal 1960s TV rock show Six Five Special and was a session musician with the Beatles and a columnist on the Melody Maker. Abi spent her formative years walking to nursery and primary school past the Rocky Horror Show which was on for years on the corner of her street. She went to Cobham Hall, a posh girls boarding school in Kent, and then to Swansea University where she gained a degree in Russian and, more importantly, lots of experience going to night clubs, drinking during the day and smoking various substances.

Abi talks about the inspiration for Beached...

"I first became aware of Bette Midler when an American friend of my mum's, Bob, nicknamed me the Divine Miss A. I saw Beaches along with every other woman and gay man when it was released in 1988. It had everything an iconic film should have - comedy, drama, big hair and a woman dying of a rare heart condition. Oi Vegas!

In 2004, I was compared to Bette Midler in the Daily Telegraph by Jonathan Harvey
(Beautiful Thing), who had seen me singing on a  TV show. Fast forward on the VHS to 2007 when I did my first solo show at the Edinburgh Festival entitled Abi Roberts Gets Her Hits Out. It was a mix of jokes and songs. Was it too vaudeville for the avant garde Edinburgh intelligentsia? The show SOLD OUT.

After that, the germ of an idea that had been going round my head since 2005 grew into something bigger. Why not do a show about me and Bette Midler?  I heard she was performing in Las Vegas, so I called my friend Lisa Marks, who I'd met on the comedy circuit in London but was now a budding film-maker in LA and we started to throw some ideas around. Short story long we hatched a plan to make a short movie about me going to Las Vegas to find Bette. I had already come up with the title for my stage show - Beached.
It seemed to stick.

More about Abi Roberts and BEACHED...
www.abiroberts.com
www.beachedthemovie.com