After picking a nice spot by the lake in the hospitality area, just over an hour before their amazing performance on the V Stage, I was able to get out a few questions (nerves had reached their maximum by this point.)  | | What's the band called again? |
Me: Right well I’ll start off with probably one of the most asked questions but how are you enjoying V so far?
SR: Well in the 3 hours that we’ve been here, as we were running a bit late this morning, it’s been alright, we haven’t really done much yet though.
CW: Yeah just some relaxing time before we go on, really liking the weather so far though.
Me: Yeah a lot better than last year at least, seemed to arrive just as it started raining!
SR: (laughs) At least it’s ok now, I hope it lasts this year. I’m really looking forward to seeing some of the bands as well! Me: Are there any particular bands that you would like to catch?
SR: Yeah there are a couple of people. Have to say that I’d like to see Dizzee Rascal.
Me: Ah that should be an interesting set.
SR: Of course, I wouldn’t mind a bit of Franz Ferdinand either, they should be pretty cool this year.
CW: I’ve heard loads of people saying they want to see Franz, I’ve heard that they’ve got a few new songs so it’ll be good to see what they’re like. But yeah I think they’re the main ones for today.  | | Joel Pott |
Me: So what do you have in store for your fans this year?
SR: Well we were in the signing tent just then.
Me: Oh yeah, how did that go?
CW: It went really well, loads of people turned up to see us which is always good, but there was a girl in the crowd in the end shouting ‘I’ve been queuing for 2 hours!’ But our slot had finished because we’d been in there for 45 minutes and couldn’t stay in for the rest of them unfortunately.
SR: We were honoured that people had been there for so long though. At least they can still see us play later. Me: Are you looking forward to doing your set?
CW: Yes! I mean we’ve played at V quite a few times before. We were on the main stage last year but it was pretty strange because we were playing new songs but the album wasn’t out yet, so like nobody knew them at all. But this year hopefully we’ll have the audience joining in quite a bit.
Me: I can imagine it must be pretty incredible! So what does it feel like when that happens?
SR: Yeah it’s a bit surreal, it’s great but we’re getting used to it now so we can’t really sit back and enjoy it as much as we used to. (laughs) Now, we can’t just go ‘how do they all know our songs, that’s a bit weird?’ I’m really really looking forward to it because we’ve been doing loads of festivals and we’ve been abroad for a lot of the summer and we’re always away so it’s always really nice coming home you know. Me: How do the English festivals compare with the ones abroad?
SR: Well at some of them there are a lot of English people, we’ve just to a festival called ‘Benicassim’ in Spain.
CW: A lot of British!
SR: Yeah and we’ve also just been to Japan and it’s really funny how the different cultures react in different ways, like the Japanese were really polite and they all clapped dead on time.
CW: And they just applaud really politely after you finish a song, then they stop and you play the next song and so on.
SR: and then there are the other places that can get really rowdy. But as always it’s always good to come home  | | Athlete's Carey Willets |
Me: Also, you’ve got a tour coming soon, are you looking forward to that?
SR: Yeah, it’s going to be our biggest ever tour so you kind of can’t not look forward to it, and most of it’s sold out so yeah.
CW: And we’re going to try and do a few new things, stuff we’ve not done before, just in the whole of trying to put on a good show.
SR: It’ll keep it exciting for us as well just trying new things, yeah I’m looking forward to it. And that was the end of that. I was able to catch some of the set and it was certainly one to remember! | 
