MIDDLESBROUGH is to stage the national premiere of a musical.

Former Flying Pickets singer Hereward Kaye, who was born in the town, has composed a musical, entitled Hell can be Heaven, about a damned soul, who descends into the underworld to find he is in a computer game.

The 47-year-old's opus is in the final of the International Playwrights' Competition 2000, and is tipped to be a winner.

Sacha Brooks, who is producing The Graduate on stage in the West End, is putting money into the musical.

Extracts are to be performed in London, but father-of-three Hereward, who returned to Middlesbrough after 25 years to buy the Linthorpe house he was born in, wants to launch the musical in its entirety at Middlesbrough.

He said: "I know the musical has a future, and I would love to see it kick off in the North-East.''

Hereward's first musical was Moby Dick, which had a four-month run in London's West End in 1992.

He wants to put on a £30,000 professional production of Hell can be Heaven, at the Middlesbrough Little Theatre.

The theatre would be interested in staging the show next June.

Hereward has also launched a band - Orchard Road - with sons Leon and Joe. It makes its debut at the Dickens Inn, Middlesbrough, on November 30