All of my mates have got babies and are getting married.. I was about to give up

Sydnie on her last chance to hit the big time

- SARAH ROBERTSON

A s she welcomed in 2024, the singer Sydnie Christmas resigned herself to a bleak New Year's resolution: to give up on her dream of West End fame.

She had spent years singing on cruise ships, or taking understudy roles, and was fed up of getting knockbacks at auditions and being told she didn't have the right look.

But she decided to give it one last shot and applied for Britain's Got Talent and five months later she is preparing for tonight's live semi-final, one of Simon Cowell's favourites and Amanda Holden's golden buzzer pick.

She says: "If you'd have told me on New Year's Eve that this would be happening in my life five months later, I would've told YOU something.

"So I'm very happy, and a very lucky girl. I feel very lucky."

Having made it this far, she is determined that nothing will stand in her way. Sydnie, 29, says: "Just to say that I've really given it everything.

The rejections she has faced so far in her career have prepared her for this challenge. She says: "I've done loads of auditions to get into the West End. It's always knockbacks, always that you don't fit.

"I'm a bit of a tomboy kind-of-looking person, so I never fit into girly roles the girl that falls in love with the prince. I never fit into the leading lady. It's a very difficult industry. But I've toughened up."

At 29, she seems far too young to be concerned about her age.

But it is a worry, she says, when it comes to getting those leading roles in her industry. That's why she was close to packing it in.

She says: "I don't have a West End credit because you need a West End credit to get into the West End which is annoying because no-one will let you in.