The James Whale Show

So, we did it.
Hopefully we'll have some pictures here at some point. In the meantime here's a description of our adventures in Television Land.

After getting up early and travelling with the rush-hour traffic into the centre of London in the back of a van, our nerves were understandably taut. Dek, being the driver, had a memorable attack of road rage in Piccadilly. Luckily we had plenty of time to relax and compose ourselves - plenty of time.

Will and Roy made their own way there via public transport: Roy couldn't face the thought of sitting on equipment for an hour and a half, and Will had to make a detour back home after realising he'd forgotten something useful for the recording, his trumpet!

We sat around for a long while in the Green Room (technical term, look it up) sharing what space there was with another band, More Tea Vicar. In fact we sat around for ages - well, long enough for the pub to open. It was at this moment that Alan had a brilliant idea...

The nearest pub was in Carnaby Street, The Shakespear's Head, and we had hardly finished our first pint before we were tracked down by the studio's annoying person, Nick Something. We apparently had some urgent PRS forms to fill-in back at the studio. Three minutes later, after filling in the forms, we were back to sitting around in the Green Room watching daytime TV again.

After the inevitable problems of sharing drum kits (we wouldn't), the other band went and sound-checked. They described themselves as soft rock, and if you ever get to see them don't expect molten lava. We sat around and watched them on the monitor, no sound unfortunately. The next act to rehearse were the 'dancers'. We all found this very disturbing (except perhaps the control room), and they were still fully clothed!

Eventually it was our turn. Two shows are recorded back-to-back with a ten minute swap-over of the bands, we were recording first so we camera-checked last. Once we were ready, Mike Mansfield came down from the control room and counted us in. There were a few stifled sniggers when he went, "Three, two, one ...cue the music." All went well, and after we sat about for a while the audience arrived and it was time to do the show!

Though it has outstanding ratings for such a late night programme, The James Whale Show is the epitome of cheap TV. The whole thing is recorded live with no post-editing. As we discovered, if there are any mistakes they rewind the tape and do it again. The first item was recorded on the street outside the studio: some bodyguards demonstrating there skills. Thoughout this section the 'dancers' were preparing themselves for the next bit, disturbing the band considerably. Luckily we didn't have to play straight after them and when it finally came to our turn, and after several false starts, we'd recovered enough to do a reasonable performance. Mike Mansfield lived up to his reputation and did tremendous work cutting the shots.

After standing around for a while, watching the other items, it was time for our second number Nice Work (If You Can Get It). This went just as well as the first number, Proud Mary, with just as many false starts, none of which were the bands fault either time - just Mr. Mansfield doing a good job and getting all the best shots (govel). The response from the audience was enough to cause James Whale to have an inpromptu chat on-air with Dom's sister-in-law. He even mentioned our forthcoming album and CD single, which was a surprise.

Having done all our stuff, we managed to clear our equipment during the add break. Who needs a ten minute turn around? When you're used to getting to gigs late you learn the skill of packing and unpacking your instrument at great speed. We managed to get back to our dressing room just in time to see the 'dancers' strutting their stuff under the closing credits, disturbingly. Ten minutes later the second show was under way, but as we didn't have any sound on our monitor we couldn't appreciate More Tea Vicar or any of the other items. We just relaxed and sat around until the end of the show so we could give our thanks to everyone. We somehow accumulated praise from loads of people, even of few rumours of such things as album reviews in the national press and other TV appearances, but we'll have to wait and see. After that, probably the most surprising thing of the whole day, we discovered the time was only nine o'clock - plenty of time to get some beers in. That's show biz!

Special thanks to the following:

• Dek for driving us, and driving himself to his limits.
• Mike for lugging our gear.
• Abby for just happening to be in the building and getting us sandwiches when we were confined to quarters.
• The sound man excellent work, we hardly noticed him.
• All the crew and production staff at VMTV and MMTV for putting up with us.
• Hilary McLaren for getting us on the show.