Guilty as charged!

ROB FIDDAMAN this week chats to Clive Gregson of The Guilty Men about the band's links to Nashville and 10cc, Jaffa Cakes and why they won't simply be churning out all the hits at their forthcoming city gig

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Please introduce yourselves and tell us what you each play in the band? Paul Burgess (drums/percussion), Neil Cossar (guitar/vocals), Craig Fletcher (bass/vocals), Clive Gregson (guitar/vocals), Jez Smith (keys, vocals)

The Guilty Men, are you all naughty boys?

Sometimes naughty, no longer boys!

How did you decide on this name?

Usual process... several weeks of knocking around daft ideas until one of us (I can't remember who) finally came up with a winner. Then a lot of internet searching to see if anybody else was using it...

Tell us where you are all from

We're all from Greater Manchester... Paul and Neil are Stockport lads and Craig, Jez and I are from various bits of Tameside.

When did you start the band?

Neil and I got together in 2021, at the back of the pandemic, to write some songs. After a couple of months of doing that, we figured we could expand the project to a full band. We recruited Jez (who I went to school with) and Craig, both from John Lees' Barclay James Harvest and Paul Burgess from 10cc. We wrote and rehearsed throughout 2022, recorded our debut album in 2023, released it late in 2024 and played our first shows around the same time.