It wasn’t long ago that the Watford Colosseum underwent an £5.5million makeover, bringing its facilities up to date to get “more bums on seats“.

Now, the live music and entertainment venue has made a further change, with the arrival of the new venue director, Tim Brinkman.

“The Watford Colosseum really is a beautifully refurbished venue, such a busy place, so much going on.

“But there are a couple of things I want to focus on in my tenure.

“The experience, what it’s like meeting the staff and coming to the venue itself.

“I also want to build and grow the programme, and with that attract more and more people to the Colosseum.“

In fact, comedy, music and musicals are the shows on Tim’s agenda for the 1,392 seat venue in the heart of town.

“We already do quite well with big comedy names and music events,“ says Tim.

“I’m pleased we’re doing Blood Brothers soon. It’s a great story, so it would be good to do some more musicals in the programme.

“It would be great to have all the top comedians coming here every year, so that comedy becomes a really strong staple – Jimmy Carr, Bill Bailey and so on.

“And looking at the capacity of the venue we’ll be looking to see if we can attract some of the bigger, more popular artists here. We’ve had some earlier successes having got One Direction to play. That was beautiful timing as they’d just exploded onto the scene.

“It really would be great to have a broader range of musical, solo singing artists here too.

“But I can’t give you any exclusives or scoops as of yet. Rest assured the Watford Observer will be the first to know when we’ve got something big lined up.“

Having swapped the sunshine of Australia, where Tim was performing arts executive of the Arts Centre Melbourne, what was it about Watford that appealed to Tim?

“In terms of the Colosseum the history of the building, that auditorium itself, where so much great music has been played and performed, where CDs have been recorded, it’s been an important venue in the music scene.

“I actually think that being part of this location in Watford, in this part of the country, where you’ve got great communications, you’ve got proximity to London, one of the leading arts city in the world. Watford has a role to play in that, as does this theatre.

“People will come here to perform as part of their tour. Watford has a lot going for it, the investment in the town will make a difference, it’s vibrant, it’s active.

“What else can I say? Watford really is magic.“