Probably the greatest export ever to leave the City of York since the Terry’s Chocolate Orange, Britpop sensations Shed Seven blazed a trail across the United Kingdom and beyond throughout the 1990s, bringing about drunken singalong after drunken singalong with hits including the seminal ‘Chasing Rainbows’.

As any true Shed Seven fan can tell you, the band is still going strong, regularly reuniting for big-selling tours including this year’s Greatest Hits Live tour – for more information click here – which features excellent support act Mark Morriss, formerly of The Bluetones.

Whilst Shed Seven remains a going concern, it’s now very much a part-time job for the band. Here’s what they all get up to when they’re not being rock stars:

Rick Witter – vocals: Vocalist Rick Witter keeps the Britpop flame alive with a radio show, Rick Witter’s Disco Down every Sunday night on North Yorkshire radio station Minster FM. Witter is something of a local celebrity in the region, often seen wandering the streets of York with his big family.

Paul Banks – guitar/keyboards: Far from content with simply achieving tremendous success with Shed Seven, Paul Banks is also the Creative Director of prominent film production company Digifish. Banks has worked on hundreds of film projects around the world, including documentary filming and creating promotional and commercial films for leading musicians including The Script and Tinie Tempah.

Tom Gladwin – bass: Bassist Tom Gladwin continues to pursue his passion for music when he isn’t concentrating on Shed Seven, having worked on numerous projects since the initial Shed Seven split including The Clients and the excellent People In Airports.

Alan Leach – drums: Confounding the myth that drummers generally aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, Alan Leach – along with his software-developer brother – have pioneered an ingenious smart-phone and tablet app called SpeedQuizzing – check it out at http://www.speedquizzing.com/. The app takes the traditional pub quiz format and turns it on its head, using a visual interface that sees users ‘buzz’ in with their answers via touch screen, thus avoiding the possibility of cheating by Googling the answers.

We’re glad to see that the Shed Seven boys are still going for gold even when they’re not on the big stage. We get the impression they’re enjoying the best of both worlds, living the rock star dream a few weeks a year and getting on with other projects and family life the rest of the time. We say good on them!

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