Reforming a band is a gamble, and even more so if you’re planning on merging your previously dormant group with another set of musicians who have a similar fondness for playground pop punk. Will people care? Have all of our fans grown up? Can anyone remember how we managed to make momentary elevation our signature move?
Perhaps that’s why McBusted – the union of McFly and Busted – have chosen to host their press conference at the Hippodrome Casino in London’s Leicester Square to announce their 2015 UK arena tour. It may be the only place decadent enough to house a fire-breathing burlesque dancer and an array of circus-inspired raunch such as bobbing for breasts, “randyfloss” and “cockporn” (better known as candy floss and popcorn, for those not well-versed in banter slang).
So what’s it like to attend an event such as this, I hear one person – perhaps the press officer for McBusted – ask? Well for starters, I didn’t witness anyone dunk their head in a bucket of cold water to grab a sponge bosom with their teeth at 10am. This isn’t the 90s, after all. But there were febrile fans aplenty, and they were much younger than I anticipated. After the fire-breathing Kitty Bang Bang’s performance (there’s a snippet below), the sextet entered the stage, like a pop-punk Village People. Each member represented another stage in the evolution of modern man: Tom Fletcher as the Nutty Professor, Dougie Poynter as the hipster Johnny Depp, Harry Judd the rock-jock hearthrob and Danny Jones, Matt Willis and James Bourne as … blokes who probably own all five Good Charlotte albums.
Believe it or not, this carefully dishevelled gaggle shifted well over 300,000 tickets on their 2014 tour’s 35 sold-out dates. So the new series of 2015 gigs is the reason why we are all gathered here today. Well, that and a game of tattoo roulette: following news of the tour, a group of journalists were brought up on stage to pick a piece of paper from a hat, with the one marked loser being forced to get the word McBusted tattooed onto their foot. It turns out the man who picked the short straw already had a One Direction tattoo on his body and was all too willing to succumb to the band’s branding. I am not calling the members of McBusted filthy disgusting liars, but this little stunt, like the whole event, may have been carefully staged.
Regardless of this Jackass-inspired japery, the group, who release their self-titled debut on 1 December, have slowly and subtly become an extremely successful supergroup formation. In fact, McBusted’s last series of shows became the UK’s largest arena tour of the year. Many laughed at their arrival, or thought their union was just a one-off, novelty comeback for the sake of 00s nostalgia and mortgage payments. But it appears this may be an actual punt at a new career. They may mask their ambitions with adolescent frivolity, knob gags and quirky clothing, but the businessmen behind McBusted have been dealt a very good hand indeed.
