Next week, the show celebrates its 20th anniversary in the West End, making it the longest running musical currently in London, and its longest running production bar the indefatigable Mousetrap. When Les Mis?bles opened at the Barbican in October, 1985, one could have been forgiven for assuming that its decidedly mixed reviews meant this melodramatic musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's 19th century novel would soon be on its way. "It stands in the same relation to the original as a singing telegram to an epic," said Francis King in The Sunday Telegraph Ouch. "A highly charged, garrulous tale, psychologically shallow, full of florid but improbable gestures and studded with set pieces of insufferable sentimentality" said John Peter In The Sunday Times. It was a complete shock."They were still hoping to scramble Brad Kavanagh from Whitehaven, Cumbria, when Julian Webber, the associate director, began running through a few scenes with Liam just in case."Amazingly, he knew it all backwards.

Nothing went wrong."The unscheduled drama began on Monday afternoon when it became apparent that Joey Phillips, who was due to play Michael that evening, could not perform as he had contracted laryngitis. But Ryan Longbottom, the understudy for that performance, was also taken ill with an upset stomach and the doctor ruled that he was unable to perform.Jessica Ronane, the children's casting director, said: "It was not a situation you anticipate happening at all. And I think it was good for Liam to go on in a different role He was fabulous.". "Watching it is rather like eating an artichoke: you have to go through an awful lot to get a very little," said Kenneth Hurren in The Mail on Sunday. It was really impressive because it means reversing all the choreography, remembering all the moves, all the script," Miss Ronane said."I don't think the audience would have known if they hadn't been told.

After the show, everyone was saying, 'Oh my God, I can't believe you picked it up so well.'"Leon Cooke, 14, from Stoke-on-Trent, who played the part of Billy in the tale of a miner's son who chases his dream to dance, might have been rattled by the turn of events having only made his debut in the musical a week earlier.But he was enormously generous about his co-star with whom he has been friends since they met at the special school set up in Leeds to train children for the musical "Liam was brilliant," Leon said "I think it went really well It wasn't really nerve-racking because we're best mates. But with six months' experience under his belt, he knew all the lines and the show was greeted with a standing ovation.Yet the plumber's son from Hull was self-critical yesterday, claiming he had not milked the part for all the laughs it normally got Neither was he entirely happy with the finale "I didn't have a clue what to do. They were all pushing me where I needed to be," he said.But he still loved doing it "It was the bestest thing I've ever done It was such an experience. "One of the stage managers told me there was a possibility I might go on for Michael so I jumped into a taxi and they got me to the rehearsal rooms and I rehearsed for a bit. It was all very quick."I was waiting to go on and I was really shaking," Liam said.

And into the breach stepped 13-year-old Liam Mower, who switched from playing his usual role of Billy to take the part of Michael with just one hour's rehearsal."I was excited but I was really nervous," he said yesterday. But two sudden illnesses and a spell of bad weather put paid to their planning. This week two of the young performers who played Michael - Billy's best friend - fell sick within the course of a few hours and the third actor was 300 miles away in Cumbria. Only when gale-force winds scuppered plans to transport the third boy to the Victoria Palace Theatre by helicopter did the team cast around for an alternative way to ensure the show went on. When the producers of the hit West End musical Billy Elliot cast its children's roles in triplicate, the possibility of a staffing crisis seemed remote. Directed by Lionel JeffriesAmerican Werewolf, LONDON AND WINDSORThe story of two American tourists on a walking holiday who are attacked by a werewolf Windsor Great Park stood in for the Yorkshire moors.

The story begins with the representatives of an American petro-chemical corporation, Knox Oil and Gas, arriving in the small village of Furness to investigate building a giant refinery. The locals outwit the incomers in a variety of startling waysThe Full Monty, SHEFFIELDThe story of a group of unemployed men who find a new source of income as male strippers became a surprise hit. Cast included Robert CarlyleTrainspotting, EDINBURGH AND GLASGOWIrvine Welsh's gritty novel of drug addiction was translated to the big screen by Danny Boyle and established Ewan McGregor as a major starThe Railway Children, YORKSHIREThis film version of the classic children's book by E Nesbit starred a young Jenny Agutter as the petticoat-waving heroine. The combination of eccentric charm, Scottish landscape and an environmental fairy tale proved a winning one with cinema audiences. Other locations included Loch Eilt and the bar of the Lochailort Inn at Lochailort, between Fort Wiliam and Mallaig. It's like those lovely old Ealing movies," he said.Next weekend, 150 members of the regional press will spend four days in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, for the 50th anniversary of the promotional event Cinema Days, deemed so important by British film-makers that stars from Bob Hoskins to the director Terry Gilliam will attend.The guests will watch forthcoming movies - both British and foreign - including Stephen Frears' Mrs Henderson Presents, shot in London, and The Libertine, starring Johnny Depp, which was filmed on the Isle of Man.The top five British cinematic settingsLocal Hero, FILMED IN SCOTLANDThe Scottish director Bill Forsyth blended Camusdarrach Beach in Morar with the village of Pennan, Aberdeenshire, on the opposite coast, to create the fictional Furness. "It's a film of which I remain immensely proud," he said.Burt Lancaster, who made the film aged 69 and died 11 years later, was said to have enjoyed his three weeks working in Scotland "What's nice is that there are no villains, just eccentrics.