While a report in the New York Post newspaper that Dreyfuss is negotiating to play the role of Satan in Jerry Springer – The Opera is untrue, he has been approached to play the title role. A spokesman for the show tells Playbill On-Line that, “David Soul is currently playing Jerry Springer in London. He’s a fabulous Springer and everyone is very happy with him.”. However, sources close to the show have revealed that the Springer producers had the idea to contact Dreyfuss when they heard the real reason he pulled out of The Producers was because he felt he couldn’t sing or dance well enough. In Springer the role of Jerry is entirely spoken.

Meanwhile, regardless of whether Dreyfuss accepts, Soul will get a chance to immortalize his portrayal of the talk-show host when BBC2 films a live performance to be broadcast in January 2005. Television broadcasts of stage musicals are extremely rare in the UK – the last was Cameron Mackintosh’s production of Oklahoma!, which was mainly filmed in a film studio. The Springer broadcast will be screened without cuts, despite the abundance of swearing (the show holds the record for the most number of swear words ever in any stage show).

More news from the Springer team. The show’s writers Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee have been commissioned to write a series of television operas for the BBC. There have been reports in the press that one of these will be an operatic version of the Beeb’s flagship public affairs program, “Question Time.” With that and The Ha-Ha Hole - the German opera about an English comedy club set to premiere in Hanover at the end of January – Thomas and Lee are going to have a very busy first half of 2005.