Belle & Sebastian were almost arrested following their appearance on ‘TOP OF THE POPS’ last week after breaking into the set of top BBC soap ‘EASTENDERS’, nme.com can reveal.
The Scottish group, who’d been on the show performing their number 15 hit ‘Legal Man’, went to go and find the mythical Albert Square after hearing it was near the Top Of The Pops studios.
Substantially fortified with alcohol from the BBC bar, Stuart Murdoch, Chris Geddes, Sarah Martin and Richard Colbourn from the band found a gate saying ‘No Entry’ that was open and wandered in.
Unfortunately, a security guard saw them larking around the Queen Vic and the car lot, grabbed them and rang the police, believing them to be common or garden trespassers.
By a strange coincidence, TOTP presenter Jamie Theakston and producer Chris Cowey were just being driven home as the group were grabbed. The pair instantly spotted their predicament, stopped the car, and managed to persuade the studio guard that the trespassing hoodlums were in fact slightly squiffy BBC guests.
A spokesperson for the band told nme.com: “I think they were quite lucky. It’s not the sort of thing they’d usually do and they almost got into real trouble over it. They’d just been celebrating a bit too much as they’d had such a wonderful time on the show.”
The band, who also revealed today that the gorilla who invaded their set on TOTP was in fact their sound engineer Tony Douggan in a suit, are also celebrating going straight into the Canadian sales charts at number four with their current single.
Their spokesperson laughed: “They’re completely dumbfounded, but so chuffed, as they’ve never even played live there before. But then they’ve never played Norway either and they’re doing really well there too.”
Belle & Sebastian’s new album ‘Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant’ was released on Monday through Jeepster.