During my recent trip to England I caught up with a good mate of mine called Barry Upton. He lives in a beautiful part of the country in Hampshire nestled between Southampton and Portsmouth.

There's a lot I could tell you about Barry! However, the printable stuff include him being in a band called "The Brotherhood of Man" whose main claim to fame came a 'few' years ago when they won the Eurovision Song Contest with "Save All Your Kisses for Me".

Barry still does live gigs, has even performed here in Bahrain, and is also a song writer and record producer. Do you remember the pop group Steps? Well, it was Barry who got them together, and during the auditioning process he saw loads of singers.

One day the now famous Simon Cowell came in and watched the proceedings; including the good, the bad and the ugly! Who would have thought that a few years later he would use the same format for television creating hit shows like Pop Idol and X Factor. I think Barry is still waiting for his commission for the idea!

Barry also produces lots of compilation albums. Included amongst them are a Halloween album, as well as Christmas, Grease, and Songs from Musicals. His latest offering which I am playing on my afternoon radio show is an album of Kids TV Theme Tunes and includes lots of my daughter Hannah's favourites such as 64 Zoo Lane, Balamory and Pocoyo. I call Barry the 'Hong Kong Producer' because he can copy anything!

I stayed with Barry for a few days and even joined him during his weekly radio show on Forest FM. He co-hosts a show with a very funny guy by the name of Matt Black. The studio is situated in Verwood; which is in a picturesque part of the New Forest. We had great fun together for three hours. I gave everybody an insight into life here in Bahrain, and the jokes and funny banter that was thrown about made for a great broadcast. Forest FM is a wonderful little radio station serving the area with a vast mixture of music styles and radio presenters.

It was very therapeutic to work with them. And it cheered me up a lot. Afterwards I was even in the mood to get back to Bahrain and get back to work.

Soon after returning I had a meeting with Jerry from the Young Goans Society about the upcoming May Queen 2008 event. I said that everything was fine by me and I will see them on May 22 which, because I had been away, felt like ages away!

But no, it soon dawned on me that it was very soon - this past Thursday, in fact! Anyway I found myself back at the Marina Club for the event; which felt kinda strange because that is where I last worked last before I had the call to return to England to see my dad shortly before he passed away.

I turned up at 8.30pm and was informed that the show "would be a little late starting 'cos a couple of the judges were late". I was eventually introduced on stage by Crasto, the MC, and introduced the 21 lovely ladies competing for the title.

The first section was the casual/sports wear section and one of the contestants even carried a squash racquet with her on stage. After this section there was a break and the band Aryan Fame rocked the crowd with their great music.

When I came back on stage, it was to introduce the young ladies for their formal wear section. I had been given notes about their likes/dislikes, ambitions and so on to talk about as they walked around the stage; the best one for me was a girl's favourite activity, "eating chocolate".

After the formal wear section we enjoyed more music from the band and also from Alfie from Music and Lights. Once again everyone was up dancing, this time to special Portuguese wedding music which was highly infectious, foot tapping stuff.

Then I returned on stage to present some awards including for Best Smile, Miss Photogenic and the best Hairdo - which I felt that I was in with a shout of winning!

We eventually got down to the final eight contestants. But wait for it, there was another break for more music and dancing. I looked at my watch and it was already 1am! Phew, I was starting to think I should've brought my breakfast with me! More awards were given, this time to all the members of the committee.

Then at last it was question and answer time for the finalists. They each gave a short talk about themselves and then picked a random question from a basket.

Some of the answers the ladies gave were very good. I was feeling a little naughty though, and when one girl handed me the unopened paper I looked at it and said, "Ooh, this is a tricky one, can you tell me the square root of 3,255,006". She looked at me with such a blank face and then I said "only kidding!"

In the end, the winner was a lovely lady called Chithira Johnson from Qatar. Second was Vanessa D'Souza also from Qatar. And coming in third was Tanu Alexander Justus from our very own Kingdom of Bahrain.

All in all, a wonderful night was had by everyone. My head eventually hit the pillow at 3am and my lovely wife and daughter let me sleep in till midday. It's good to be back in Bahrain!

Keep happy,

Krazy Kevin