THIS WEEK it’s MrX’s turn to arrange the transport and he rocked up at Fraud HQ in the worst tourbus we’ve ever had. Fail No.1.

Inside the rusty blue boneshaking MoT failure was LORD LUKAN just along for the ride. The journey was quite eventful – X nearly demolished the petrol station’s Texaco sign (Fail No.2) and was clearly thousands of miles away as he answered our various questions with the most bizarre responses:

Q) Can we stop at a cash till please? 
A) It’s alright, everyone’s wearing jeans

Q) Are we getting any food? 
A) No, bring a phone charger

Q) Did you see the scores? Wigan beat Newcastle 4-0! 
A) Yeah I’m in a blue tourbus just outside Kansas

Alongside the weddings, we’ve been having a spate of 40th birthday parties these last 18 months. As Martin Coogan observed during the recording sessions: “You’re the band for 40-year-old Stone Roses fans!”

Now, don’t get me wrong because it NEVER gets boring playing 40th birthday parties for Stone Roses (or any bands) fans (or weddings) but once in a while someone comes up with something novel and different for us to tackle, like this one: A birthday party for TWO 40-year-olds!!!!

AFTER an interesting journey round the M60 playing a game of "guess how much it would cost to build THAT building" we arrived in the place known as "Stalyvegas" for what would be yet another Fraudsters First….. a gig in a Chinese restaurant. We had absolutely no idea what to expect for this one. We imagined ourselves playing while squeezed between tables containing trays of noodles, rice and meat dishes. We needn't have worried. When we arrived at "Phoenix City" it had a large upstairs function room with a decent sized stage with proper sound and lighting systems. One of the best private party set ups we've had for a while. If there was one complaint to be had, it was about the in-house smoke machine – it gave out the weakest cloud of smoke you've ever seen inside a venue since the smoking ban was introduced.

GLENN runs an excellent little live venue at The Brooklands Tap. It’s a suburban pub half way between Sale town centre and that annoying bollard in the pavement half way down Brooklands Rd – you know, the one that stops you mounting the pavement to squeeze past the cars turning right at the Belmore Hotel, so you have to wait ages while they wait for all the oncoming traffic before they can turn right and get out of your way so you can go straight on. Grrrrr……

Anyway, we’d been trying to get on at The Tap for many a moon, and it just so happened that on one Tuesday they had a cancellation for the forthcoming Friday. So, Glenn hotfoots it across the junction to The Brook pub where our mate DB is the landlord and he asks him “What’s that band I’ve heard on in here sometimes? You know, the one who’s singer you can hear doing your karaoke on a Sunday?”
“Aaah, that’ll be The Fraudsters and here is the phone number of their drummer Burkey” replied Mr. DB.

THE FRAUDSTERS rounded off 2011 with three “Mad Friday” gigs in December. We’ve already covered the Pinsent Masons staff party which we did for our mate Howie Zowie Gillo Brillo, so what of the other two?

Well, 9th December saw us playing amongst the neo-classical Greek columns of Manchester Art Gallery (I will probably now get loads of Twitter abuse from Architectural aficionados telling me they are not Neo-classical, they are Doric… except I ain’t on Twitter, so send the abuse to Burkey – @fraudsterboosh)
The function was for a mate of a mate’s mate who works for a jewellery company. It was very posh with everyone dolled up in their best party frocks, and a proper “Events Co-ordinator” (Kate) organizing the show to ensure it all went smoothly.