THE first time Danielle Hope played the Narrator in the musical Joseph And the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat she was 13 and appearing in a school production.

Nearly a decade later she's taking the same role in the latest UK tour of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice musical. Quite a lot has happened since then, most notably winning the BBC's talent show Over The Rainbow. Her prize was to play Dorothy in a major Lloyd-Webber revival of The Wizard Of Oz at the London Palladium.

She spent a year walking down the yellow brick road alongside co-star Michael Crawford. Since then she's played Eponine in the London West End production of Les Miserables, done various musical workshops and launched her own solo show. And there was panto with Gok Wan and John Partridge, one of the Over The Rainbow judges.

After beating 9,000 other girls to be Lloyd Webber's Dorothy she studied on a three-month intensive musical theatre course at the Arts Educational School to prepare for her professional debut at the Palladium.

The lead-up for The Wizard – three weeks rehearsal, three weeks tech rehearsal and four weeks of previews – was considerably longer than the week's rehearsal for the Joseph tour. "The Narrator sings the whole show and I thought I'd never be able to learn it in the time. But it came back from when I did it at school. It must have been in a file at the back of my brain," Hope says.

Doing ten performances a week is gruelling but she's pleased the tour takes her to,the North as she's never appeared in her home city of Manchester until now. "The schedule is tough but we're looking after each other. There's no time to do anything but the show so I'm going to surrender to it," she says.

"I love it because every role I've done has been completely different which is so challenging, both physically and vocally. That's so interesting. I'm pleased with the roles I've had.

"And I love doing workshops of new shows because of the Dorothys' programme. We had new material every week and only three or four days to learn it, and then discard it."

Lloyd Webber has continued to take an interest in her career post-Dorothy, including being in the audience when she debuted her one-woman show. Her ambitions haven't changed since finding success – to keep working and go into the right things at the right time.

"But the way I'm approaching things has changed because I never thought in a million years that it could happen to anyone from my background because nobody does this in my family and we didn't have all the money in the world.

"i don't take anything for granted. I knew it would be hard and tough and there would be times you didn't work. I don't know where I'd be without that programme," Hope says.

Another reality talent show contestant Lloyd Daniels makes his musical theatre debut in the title role in this Joseph tour. The 2009 X Factor finalist and Hope haven't worked together before, but there is a connection. "One of my friends looks the spitting image of him and came to watch me on the show every week. Some of the magazines put that I was dating him and he was coming to see me," says Hope.

Daniels reckons playing Joseph is good fun. "It's incredible. I've been given a role that suits me and which I'm very happy with. I'm enjoying it so much which makes it easy," he says.

He'd never seen the show before getting a call from producer/director Bill Kenwright to audition for a role. Lloyd sang a few songs and was offered the part a few weeks later.

Unlike some previous Josephs, he hasn't been spending a lot of time in the gym getting in shape for the loincloth scenes. "I did start off training but I'm terrible at continuing to do it, to be honest," he admits.

"I'm quite slim but my body is not in perfect condition. I want the audience to think I'm just a normal guy who enjoys his life more than anything, so Joseph is perfect."

Some X Factor contestants have struggled to keep their career alive. Daniels was only 16 when in the finals. "I suppose I was thrown in at the deep end. I was handed gigs and toured for two years. I just went with it and hoped for the best. It's quite a blunt way of putting it – expect the worse and hope for the best. But if you do gigs and come across well, they'll book you again."

Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat: Darlington Civic Theatre, Nov 18-22. Box Office: 01325-486555 and darlingtoncivic.co.uk