Colin says goodbye, and we welcome our new bass Derek

As those who came to the last night at the Riverside will already know, we've undergone our first change in personel for over eight years. We're extremely sorry to see Colin go, after he was offered a six month tour as a backing vocalist with Robbie Williams. It was a very tough decision for him to make, and we'll miss him very much as we go forward into our new theatre show beginning in Hamburg in March.

Finding out Colin was leaving just a few days before rehearsals for the new show left us with a tough task to replace such a vital member of the group. With the help of a number of contacts we were able to bring in 8 auditionees at very short notice. All very talented, in particular we'll always remember Bruce, the 6'4, 46 year old ex-US Marine who sang Georgia to us and gave us tingles down our spines.

However, the man wot won it was the marvellous Derek Green of Derby who impressed us not only with a lovely singing voice, but fantastic dancing ability, and an irrepressable desire to make silly noises on microphones. A similar size and age from Colin, Derek has been a theatre performer and mime artist for many years. So far he's fitted in very, very well, picking up parts fast and singing low and in tune. He certainly needs to. We open in less than three weeks!!

Riverside Run Report

Thanks to everyone who came to see us at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. We enjoyed some fantastic gigs, particularly in the last week as audiences numbers built up nicely after our TV and radio appearances. It was wonderful to have so many new faces in the audience, as well as many die-hard fans. We hope to see you many more times in the future.

We were also lucky to have our favourite celebrity fan Elle Macpherson down on two occasions with several of her friends and family. Thanks for all the texts and emails telling us about the coverage having her around got us in Heat magazine, the News of the World, and the Daily Telegraph to name but a few. Also in the audience on the last night was film and West End star Ewan Macgregor. Amazingly he came because he is in an a cappella group, even more amazingly given that it was formed, just The Magnets all those years ago, while he was performing in Guys'n'Dolls recently. There must be something about that musical...

The final concerts were particularly memorable for us as they marked Colin's last shows as a member of The Magnets before he joins up with Robbie Williams as part of his backing choir. More on this in a further post.

GMTV & LK Today -- Today

Hey all --

Thanks to everyone who sent in messages after seeing us on "GMTV" and "LK Today" this morning. We actually recorded LK Today yesterday, but did the GMTV slot live in the studio. 5.45am calls don't bother us!!

For those who didn't catch it we performed an edited version of "This Love" on GMTV at 7.40am and then "Crazy Love" at about 9am on LK Today. Everyone at the studio was lovely to us and we're very pleased to have been on the show.

Hopefully people who saw it will be inspired to get tickets to the Riverside show!


Nic
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