Singers, dance students and amateur actors made sure that, as far as the 2020 Guild was concerned, the show carried on.

Organisers say that the move to make the Guild an online event for this year exceeded their expectations, after 91 people made the effort to send in their video entries to ’The Guild Goes On!’, over the same time period that the original event was due to run.

Not wishing the hard work and effort by students to prepare for the festival to go to waste, the Guild organisers asked people to submit their entries under a non-competitive format, which would then be scrutinised by the three professional adjudicators.

At the end of the week, at the start of May, 54 people had entered songs, together with 16 dance entries and 18 drama performances.

Among the musical entries was eight-year-old Cristl Stitt, who sang a song called ’the River Lullaby’, taken from the Disney film ’The Prince of Egypt’, and Anna Tamarova, who sang a Belorussian folk song, dressed in traditional costume.

Anya Jagus entered by singing a song from the musical ’Waitress’, with farther Chris accompanying on piano, and guitarist and singer Adrian Cowin submitted a video of himself singing ’I Won’t Send Roses’ from the 1974 musical Mack and Mabel.

Children formed the bulk of the entries in the dance section, mostly complete with beautiful performances from their living rooms, often in costumes and looking very relaxed in their home environment.

Drama competitors opted primarily for the spoken word with set poems ’If Once You Have Slept On An Island’ by Rachel Field and ’Flying’ by J M Westrup.

Meanwhile, adult performer Norman McGregor-Edwards showcased the slightly gruesome ’The Barking Creek Bell Ringer’s Daughter’ in a fine cockney accent.

Guild chairman Anne Clarke, who submitted her own efforts in the drama section with a performance of ’Ward F4’ by Phoebe Hesketh, said: ’Although the main event was unable to go ahead this year, we’re absolutely delighted with the turnout for "The Guild Goes On!".

’It was a lot of fun to organise and has kept the team very busy processing feedback from the adjudicators and sending it to entrants.’

She added: ’We would very much like to offer our thanks to Celton Manx for its help in making this year’s online festival a success, in addition to Dandara for its ongoing support.

’Radio presenter Judith Ley assisted greatly with the technical aspects and brought her usual enthusiasm to the process, and all three highly experienced professional adjudicators were a wonderful asset too.

’However, the ones to thank most are the performers who took the time to record their efforts and send them in.

’It’s not easy to showcase your talents on video but everyone did a fabulous job and helped to make ’The Guild Goes On!’ a wonderful success.

’Now, bring on the Manx Music Competitive Music, Speech and Dance Festival 2021!’