Hello and welcome to the Midpoint. My guest today was launched into our lives via reality TV in 2012 when he won Superstar, the ITV show which led him to being cast as Jesus in Andrew Lloyd Webber's rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar.

Of course, he had a career before that and in fact a life of treading the

boards ever since he won a scholarship to the prestigious Italia Conti Academy as a 16-year-old,

which meant uprooting from Sunland where he'd grown up and leaving his family behind on the

quest for stardom. Along the way, he's been in the Rocky Horror Show, starred in Evita and was Phantom in Phantom of

the Opera. He's a recording artist too, and his latest album is eponymous, so gives away his name.

Ben Forster's musical's greatest hits is out very soon. Away from his musical life, Ben and his

husband Paul are very big on social media. They bought a very large Georgian mansion back to life in Cumbria.

It is the makeover to beat all makeovers.

And they documented it brilliantly to their considerable Instagram following.

So I can't wait to hear all about tiles, staircases, copper baths, and of course all things musicals.

Let's chat to Ben.

Ben Foster, welcome to the midpoint.

I can't believe I've got you here.

And already, off camera, off pod, chatting away.

I know.

I've known you for about 50 years.

Well, that's nice, isn't that? Well, I'm quite a chat box, actually. Perfect. This is going to be fun, then. It's good, and this is so nice. Oh, well, you know. How glamorous. Quite new to me, but I'm glad you like it. I love it. We were actually talking just then about cosmetics and the aesthetic of aging, which we don't always touch on actually on the midpoint, because we try and get into kind of the gritty stuff as well. But when you're in your line of work, I think it's quite interesting that there is so much more confidence now to talk about age. I feel like 20, 30 years ago, especially female actresses and singers and performers, wouldn't necessarily want to acknowledge they're in this period's true. Are you comfortable talking about that? I'm comfortable talking about it. I'm comfortable with it. I don't know. Like I do totally feel a pressure because we're on stage, we're in front of lights, we're doing interviews, we're getting out a picture taken. And I do always feel like, oh, do I look right?

Am I shiny?

Am I too fat?

Am I too thin?

I was born in a generation.

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