[James]

A boy less ordinary

Preston is the front man who, he candidly admits to Alexis Petridis, ignored his bandmates' wishes when he went on Celebrity Big Brother. He found fame and romance - and record sales are going up. So what do the Ordinary Boys think now?

Saturday February 18, 2006
The Guardian

In HMV's Oxford Street megastore, an unseemly scuffle has broken out. Going by appearances, you might think it an unfair fight - two of the combatants are professional bouncers, and the other two are tiny girls in school uniform - but that would be to underestimate the sheer amount of foul-mouthed venom tiny girls can produce when suddenly deprived of both the chance to meet their current idols and their footwear. The girls have each removed one of their trainers, in order to have them signed by the slightly dazed band that sit behind a hastily erected trestle table. The bouncers, presumably enforcing some kind of no-trainer-signing rule, have snatched the shoes from the table. The ensuing battle disconcerts the bouncers. "Now come on, love," sighs one plaintively, returning the trainers and conceding defeat.

It is a peculiar sight, but then the whole afternoon has been peculiar. It's not so much the behaviour of the crowd - although the store's vast ground floor is heaving, there is a lot of screaming and crying going on and, amid the chaos, a rack of singles has been knocked over - more the band that have provoked it.

Three weeks ago, the only people likely to be found screaming hysterically at the Ordinary Boys were their accountants and label bosses. The Worthing band's career had started strongly in 2004. There was talk of the Next Big Thing, a die-hard fanbase called the Ordinary Army, and 100,000 copies sold of their Jam, Britpop and ska-influenced debut album, Over The Counter Culture. But then the Ordinary Boys lost momentum. Radio stopped playing their singles, and they found themselves lapped by bands that had once supported them on tour: Hard-Fi and the Kaiser Chiefs. The latter went on to release 2005's fourth biggest selling album. The Ordinary Boys' second effort, Brassbound, limped to No 31 in the charts, before giving up the ghost. Some observers thought the band was about to follow suit. "I saw them playing live at the South By Southwest festival last year, and I thought, 'This is completely over'," says NME editor Conor McNicholas. "If you'd told me last November that we'd have the Ordinary Boys on the cover of the NME by February, I'd have laughed at you.".....

Full article here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/featu...711100,00.html