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Caroline Redman Lusher, 37, stumbled on her Rock Choir concept while teaching performing arts at 
a sixth form college. Convinced that there was mileage in the idea of choirs that are accessible to people of all ages and abilities, she quit her job, borrowed £1,000 from her father and set about making it into a business. Seven years later, she has 17,000 members belting out pop classics in 226 towns around the UK.

It's perhaps not surprising that her cats, Holland and Dozier, are named after famous Motown songwriters. "They're brothers, although we originally thought Dozier was a girl. He still behaves a bit like one," she says. "Rock Choir has been my life for a few years now and it's had a big emotional impact on me. Coming back to two cats who just want to be stroked has saved me sometimes. Our members are a cross-section of the British public and one minute I can be overwhelmed by how generous people can be and the next I'm amazed at how horrendously nasty a few of them can be. But my cats don't have an agenda, they just do their own thing and I think that's so brilliant. Why can't people be like that? Why do people have to harbour all these issues? My cats don't have a care in the world apart from what pigeon they can catch today. It must be so nice to not have those things going on."

 

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