Blog: The Fair Play Trophy 2004

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Hooray! We had a FANTASTIC evening at BBC6 last night - settle down, dear reader, and I shall tell ALL.

So, we met up in a pub called The Ship which i had PLUCKED from the inter-ether, and which luckily turned out to be Quite Nice. I was in a bit of a PANIC when I arrived, but as everybody turned up I switched over to BOSSING them around, which took my mind off it nicely. By 7.00pm we had assembled Mr T McClure (Validator representative, all the way from Leicester), my brothers James, Thomas, and Paul, and pals Pauly, Cathy and HER brother Paul. I have said it before, but it is true - these days my career in ROCK is less like a 24 hour bacchanalia, and more like a very polite rolling stag do, never progressing beyond midnight. It's LOVELY.

Following the timetable we set off for Broadcasting House, SINGING as we went. I'd prepared song sheets for everyone, and the group very noticeably split into two groups - the Slightly Embarrassed and the Totally Unembarrassed, BELLOWING as we went. At the BBC we met up with Charlie and Matt, the last of our party, and went up to the 5th Floor. With time to spare I got our my guitar and we had a couple of run throughs of "The Fair Play Trophy" (again with me in Full On Band Leader/Bossy Socks mode, saying "Now, we need to PAUSE before 'wi-i-i-in' - follow ME") and the "b-side", which we'd also been asked to do. The "b-side" of the internet single version of the song was "Boom Shake The Room" and as I'd brought more people with me than I often get in an audience, it seemed like a good idea to do it here to. My dears, it certainly WAS.

About half way through, Journalist and Broadcaster Miranda Sawyer popped into the room. Again, a clear divide was noted in the room: Indie Gentlemen Of A Certain Age, and Everybody Else. Knees knocking and googly-eyed after she'd left, one of the former group said "Ooh! Aah! What was the name of the other one?" "Caitlin Moran!" we replied.

Henry The Producer came in to tell us it'd be an hour before they were ready for us, so it was HO! for the BBC Canteen, where we found that Terry Wogan had NOT been lying to us all those years, and the food DID look a bit horrid. We were a VERY disparate group sat round the table talking about Buffy, Space Travel, Song Theory and Sexuality, and if nothing else it FIRMLY decided me that I very much WILL be having a big party for ALL my friends next year. My friends are LOVELY.

An hour or so later we were back in the reception room, and were collected by Henry and Phil The Sound Guy. By now my little posse was positively BLASE about the whole thing, saying "Are we going in yet or what eh?" and so on. This changed DELIGHTFULLY when we got into the studio, as people realised This Was Actually Happening. My brother James, especially, got a bit over-excited and started taking pictures of everything. Things got even MORE exciting when the great man himself, Mr Lamacq, came in and started working the desk - oh BLESS, I was stood facing everybody else, and could SEE everyone going "Ooh! It's him!"

As before, Steve gave me about 1 minutes warning of what questions he was going to ask me, and we were OFF! It was ACE! The idea was that this was a futuro-scopic review of 2004 As If It Had Already Happened, and my BIT was that "The Fair Play Trophy (once again)" had become a worldwide mega hit. Having DAYDREAMED about this for YEARS I was more than happy to talk about it, and we had a VERY jolly chat, before LAUNCHING into song. It was ACE - the BBC chaps had only heard us soundchecking a chorus, so we a bit STUNNED by the full on ROCK POWER of the song itself. It was GRATE!

Everybody else was getting a bit GIGGLY by now, bless, especially when Steve said "There's quite a crowd here..!" expecting a ROAR of crowd-NESS, but instead got a gentle wave of TITTERING. It was lovely. Anyway, we then moved on to Part Two, when he asked me about the b-side - now, I don't want to SPOIL it for the broadcast, as I thought it was Quite Amusing, especially the bit about Uncle Phil being the Finance Secretary, so let's move on to doing "Boom Shake The Room" Itself, shall we? It was an LARF and a HALF, and sounded GRATE, ESPECIALLY the "tell the girls what you want to do" bit. I, as usual, went a bit AWRY in places, and song sheets were SEARCHED for where on earth we'd got to, ESPECIALLY when i got carried away with myself towards the end and did the "many people try to stop my show" line which I usually miss out. This made me go WRONG for where i was supposed to be, and i felt myself CAREERING towards disaster, saying "I heard the crowd go..." a line early, stopping, and GLARING at my choir. There was a moment of silence before someone went "...boom?" someone else went "shake?" and another brave soul said "the room?" "YES!" says I, and its into the choruses and the BIG HARMONY FINISH!

You can hear it yourself on New Years Day anyway, hopefully it will be as TOP NOTCH as I recall. There was much handshaking and JOY in the room, then we left for THE PUB! This was GRATE, altho ODD in that at one point I found myself witnessing a heated THREE WAY DEBATE about which of my songs was MOST GRATE. This doesn't happen very often, and luckily we moved on to SPACE SHIPS before I could get freaked out and confused.

All in all it was a BEAUTIFUL evening, so thank you VERY MUCH INDEED to all my lovely friends who came along, it was BRILLIANT. And, when I got home, I found that The Pea In My Pod was feeling much much better, and LO! I was very happy indeed.

Merry Christmas everybody!

posted 12/12/2003 by MJ Hibbett

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