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Supergrass to busk in COVENT GARDEN?

Right. If the NME tells you that Danny Goffey and Gaz Coombes of Supergrass are going to busk in Covent Garden at lunchtime, then don’t listen to them, because (as the updated news story now says), the band will be at the Royal Festival Hall instead, but you’ll go all the way over to Covent Garden and hang around for 15 minutes with some other confused people and won’t find out what’s really going on until the two paps who have also been given duff information find out where the band really are and you then end up legging it down to Embankment and over the bridge to see what remains of the busking gig…

Supergrass, Royal Festival Hall

Ah well. I might have missed the start, but it was still a more interesting use of my lunch hour than normal. I made it across to the other side of the river just in time to see Danny and Gaz (performing as the Diamond Hoo Ha Men for charity on the BBC’s Culture Show’s “let’s see how much real bands can make busking” spot) doing Beat It, which they then followed with what they described as “covers” of this band they really like called Supergrass–Lenny, Caught By The Fuzz and Diamond Hoo Ha Men.

At the end of the gig, as I hung around to watch them passing the hat around to collect for homeless charity Crisis, I overheard some confused American tourists:

Middle-aged American Lady: Who are they? They’ve got white jumpsuits on and one of them says “Randy” and the other one says “Duke”. Who are they?
American Lady’s Husband: I think they’re off TV.

American Lady: Well if they’re off TV why are they outside collecting money? That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Obviously the concept of “collecting for charity” hasn’t quite made it across the Atlantic…