At the age of 87, RAF veteran Diana Newell won the third series of the UK’s Channel 4 talent show The Piano in May 2025. 

On the show, she played her own composition, “Dreams,” which was written in memory of her late husband, Phil, to whom she was married for 63 years. Phil was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2015 and passed away six years later. 

The finale of The Piano took place in Gateshead, where Newell performed “Dreams” in front of a live audience of 1,600, with almost 3 million watching at home.  

In October, she performed “Dreams” with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and conductor Mark Wigglesworth as part of Classic FM Live at 25 at the Royal Albert Hall. 

This performance, her Royal Albert Hall debut, can be viewed below!

 

 

“I first started sitting on the organ bench with my teacher when I was four years old and I just kept going ever since,” Newell said in an interview. “Piano has been with me all my life. It’s music, isn’t it? It’s music you can make for yourself. It’s opened the door for me for so many things.”

“I went into the RAF because there was a band, and I wanted to do music,” she explained. “I had to do an audition and that opened the door for me to carry on with music. My instrument there was a tenor horn though. I met my husband in the RAF … And sometimes we’d end up on the same engagements. I always used to say that he marched to my tune!”

 

 

“Because of arthritis in my hands, I cannot play what I used to — Chopin and Beethoven and Grieg. My husband Phil’s favourite piece of music was the Moonlight Sonata, but I have to adapt it to my hands now and it’s not really satisfactory. When he passed away, I went to the piano, because the piano has always been my best friend. I went to play, just to improvise, on the piano.”

“I was used to playing with a lot of people listening, as an organist, and then as piano accompaniment to different groups of singers,” she said on appearing on The Piano. “So it didn’t hit me until we were taken on to the stage in the auditorium, just with a grand piano sitting there, and I was thinking ‘That’s going to be me on there!’ The hosts were absolutely amazing though and made us all feel at ease. I never thought I’d win. I was so shocked!”