England legend’s residency onboard P&O Cruises ship Britannia<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n Rafferty, a 16-year-old Peter Symonds College student, secured his place in the BGT semi final with his family telling Britain\u2019s Got Talent hosts Ant and Dec that it had been his dream since he was five years old.\n<\/p>\n
\n SOS, Sparx and Ash Jenkins, Josh Vaughan and Josh Rose, progressed following their rendition of Everybody by the Back Street Boys. Three members of the band, who met at Highcliffe School, hail from New Milton.\n<\/p>\n
\n After the successful show, Rafferty said: \u201cI am so grateful for it happening. I cannot put it into words. It was so surreal. It was like an out-of-body experience, but I was very grounded in the moment as well.\n<\/p>\n
\n ![]()
Rafferty Coope is through to the semi finals of Britain’s Got Talent (Image: Camilla Coope)\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI am so proud of the performance that I managed to give. I was more nervous than I thought I was going to be, but I think that showed how much I cared. When I started the act and heard the response, I knew it was going to work.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI grew up watching the show. So, getting to stand on that stage and see the judges right there was amazing. It did not feel real because I was watching them on TV since I was young. It was crazy. I have never performed to an audience that size before, so it was amazing to do so. And the crew was so nice to me and made me feel welcome.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Rafferty is currently performing as Jean Valjean in a Footlights Youth production of Les Mis\u00e9rables at the Berry Theatre in Hedge End, until Saturday. He will next appear on Britain’s Got Talent at the end of April, while SOS will be on screens later this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A winner from the county in this year’s Britain’s Got Talent is looking increasingly likely after two spectacular…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-462557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}