I SCANNED the cast list of David Frankel’s film about Paul Potts’s progress from mobile-phone salesman to operatic recording artist, searching for the name of the actor playing Luciano Pavarotti.

Pavarotti has few lines and doesn’t sing in the film (he died several years before it was made!). But he does tell Paul that he has no future singing opera, which has been Paul’s ambition since schooldays when he was the regular victim of a gang of bullies (or so the screenplay by Justin Zackham tells us).

“One Chance” tells a story often told on screen. Aspiring talent overcomes obstacles on the road to fame. Paul Potts (James Corden) growing up in a working-class family (Colm Meaney and Julie Walters) saves his wages to pay for the summer school in Venice at which Pavarotti dashes his expectations. Girl-of-his-dreams, checkout chick Julie (Alexandra Roach), negotiates the shoals of a relationship with an essentially unassertive man. His boss (Mackenzie Crook) keeps the film’s humour at simmering point. The leading bully eventually gets what we’ve been waiting for since the film began. After a standing ovation at a regional heat of “Britain’s Got Talent”, Potts goes on to win the final. Her Maj comes to hear Potts sing. Potts sells two milliion+ records. Roll credits. Few surprises.

The singing is abbreviated opera pops culminating in perhaps the hardest word in the repertoire for a tenor to do well – the final “Vincero!” in “Nessun dorma”.

Anyway, who plays Pavarotti isn’t that important.

 At Hoyts, Dendy, Capitol 6 and Palace Electric