A Day In The Life Of ReMix ...A Funky Rock & Pop Band For Hire

It's Friday and it's gig day! A light breakfast of 3 Mr Kipling's Fondant Fancies, 2 cups of Earl Grey tea and a short dose of Jeremy Kyle, and its time to start the gentle preparations in a stress-free fashion!

I've been running ReMix for about 8 years now, so thankfully it’s a well-oiled machine that requires little more than the occasional tweak, tailoring, add-ons and personalisation for events.

The important thing is checking that there are enough bags of Haribo within easy reach of the van steering wheel! We don't all travel together (we like to follow in the Royal Family's tradition in that way!) but we do team up. There are usually 3 of us in the van jostling for elbow room, and the rest of the gang hook up along the way in a few cars. As well as being our mobile PA container of the road, the van is also our portable sweet shop - all those sugars and chemicals are invaluable when you're trudging down the motorway sometimes at 5.00 am, trying to beat the birds and their dawn chorus!

Today we're lucky enough to only have a 40 minute drive, and we're all excited to be playing at the very prestigious Pinewood Studios, again. Home to the enormous 007 stage and umpteen films/TV that have been recorded here (including all of the "Carry On" films...ooooh Matron!).

Part of the joy of this job is that we get to sneak a peek at venues, palaces, castles, hotels and parts of the world that we would never normally visit, so we're in a very enviable job.

Trusty old sat-nav takes us down a dirt track (why take the direct main road when you can bump across some stones and shave a whole 3 yards off the calculated distance) but we roll up, check into security, grab our passes and the map of this incredible Pinewood “city”, and head off to where we are playing.

Today is a corporate event for Siemens, which is a very glitzy Hollywood movie style affair with all the theming and props to go with it. As we unload the van there are a lot of “ooh” and “ahh” noises from us all as we wind our way down the corridors, past the office of Sir Roger Moore himself, and shelves full of gleaming gold film awards.

The production team have already set up, and it's a bit strange as we have to set up squished behind a star-cloth and huge projector screen so the crowd can't see us, until we are revealed later after the awards. You never know what lies in wait at a venue, which is part of the fun - will it be straight forward, or will there be some Crystal Maze style set-up that needs to be negotiated?! Today it’s the latter, but as ever we enjoy the challenge and the hunt for plug sockets is on (a favourite game!).

Despite the unusual set up, we're done and dusted fairly quickly and there is time to sound check a few requests from our client. In keeping with the event we've been asked for some James Bond, so we give that a bit of a polish up having not played it for a while. We all agree that in a dream world “Live and Let Die” would be requested by every client, as we love it.

Set up all finished, it's time to relax. Well, for some of us. Two of the gang are playing background jazz during the champagne reception, so they slip into their swanky gear and toddle off to work while we get to eat dinner in the huge room where they filmed Cleopatra. (An enormous swimming pool area which is now all carpeted over, but still has huge columns and dis-used water fountains). Captain Jack Sparrow, Sean Connery, Marilyn Monroe and Ricky Gervais (in David Brent mode) lookalikes join us for dinner. Nicky (one of our female singers) is swooning in conversation with Jack Sparrow, and I'm having a hot flush over Ricky Gervais (I know, I have weird taste in men!), and there's one or two raised pulses from the boys when they see Marilyn Monroe in her amazing gold dress.

There's a LOT of hanging around in this job (sometimes 4/5 hours sitting in a dressing room until we actually play), but we all get on so brilliantly that we really don't mind. It's like hooking up with your brothers and sisters every week to laugh, poke fun, annoy, wind-up, tease, and put the world to rights – i.e. pure bliss! Today we're being very well looked after too, and the catering staff offloads their un-eaten canapés from the champagne reception on us, so we're very happy to oblige, not to mention a couple of bottles of wine and a bucket full of Smirnoff Ice. But don't worry, we never get drunk - we are mindful that we are there to put on a jaw-dropping professional performance (without slurring!), and we're always driving anyway. So contrary to what people think about musicians, we're very well behaved and leave the TV smashing escapades to the stadium playing bands!

Our first set is quite delayed, but this is quite usual to be honest and our motto is that we are there to go with the flow. We're mascara'ed, deodorised, hair gelled and ready for action should anyone give us the “NOW!” signal. Finally, the awards are over and it's time for us to spring into action. The room has been re-set so guests have moved out into the other areas to mingle and lubricate themselves at the bar, so it's our job to crack on and grab them all into the main ballroom. We're not backwards in coming forwards and as we kick into action all of our singers, guitars and horns hit the dance floor too to encourage guests up (that's the beauty of all being on radio mics). We figure there's no better way to fill the floor than by setting a good example! As guests come flooding in, our client runs up and hugs me mid song! She's delighted that she can now officially relax, knowing her bit is now done and she can totally leave the evening to us. She's requested “Le Freak” as a guilty pleasure, so we oblige of course and boogie with her to celebrate her efforts. She even gets jiggy with our trumpet player in a mini dance-off!

The crowd are lovely, the room looks amazing from up on the stage, and the sea of smiling faces and everyone bellowing along to the anthems is a little reminder of just how lucky we are to be doing such an incredibly fun job. Yes, hoiking all that heavy gear around is hard work and painful, the long hours and the stress of always wanting everything to be perfect whether you’re playing to 50 people or 5,000 people. They keep your feet on the ground. But when you have strangers coming up to hug and kiss you like they're your best pal because we've been “the best band EVER!!” then there is absolutely no other job that could come close for that heart-swelling satisfied feeling.

We obligingly finish on some Killers/Guns and Roses after request yelps from the crowd with our guitarist on his knees with all the guys in black tie at the front, and there's some serious air guitar going on. What better way to end the night than in noisy rapture!

The pack down and load out are super speedy. We look like an army of ants, everyone knowing their job, cases to fill, stands to wind down, mics to de-battery, covers to put on, and then the game of Tetris filling the van begins. Our drummer finds our loud-haler and from the side of the van shouts "ACTION!" I think he's been dreaming of an appropriate time to use it, and where better than Pinewood Studios!

Hugs and kisses are delivered all round and we all toddle off to our cars to wind our way home, tired but exceedingly happy and content that we've all had a fantastic night. And now for a bit of Magic FM in the van to wind down (shhh, don’t tell anyone!)