The Toy Orchestra travelled to BBC Manchester last night for a thoroughly enjoyable, if a little nerve-wracking live session on the Marc Riley show. We played three tracks live in an otherwise excellent playlist and recorded a fourth track for Gideon Coe which was broadcast later in the evening from the London studio.

The producing team were a delight – but let’s face it engineer Chris had little to do except tweak and twiddle a compression knob and fine tune the reverb on a hand-clap – and how exciting to have Stuart Maconie pop by from next-door’s Radio 2 show effusing wildly that he’s scheduled to play ’Qwerty’ on an upcoming edition of (my personal fave) The Freakzone. Stuart also mentioned the words ‘Live Session’, so watch this space…

Brian is charmed on-air by being described as “good-looking” and I get described as “the Ronnie Wood” of the band. Haha! The Toys all perform admirably and there’s relief all round. Then the fellow from Elbow pops in and… well… it’s Rock ‘n Roll, isn’t it?

Job done, we pack up and drive home avoiding the excitement of Rusholme but stopping at a lonely out-of-town chip-shop where crazed fans won’t recognise us.

For the next 7 days you can listen again via the following Links;

BBC 6Music Marc Riley show ; (pics from the programmes Facebook page)

BBC 6Music Gideon Coe show