The show we were due to play in London next week has had to be cancelled. We don’t want to say too much publicly about this, except that the person promoting it was the promoter of the previous date which was also cancelled, and that we didn’t find out about the cancellation from him. Other than that it is best to draw a veil over the whole incident.

However, we do have some good news, which is that the third EP will be recorded shortly. Olsen, freed from the tight leash on which he was kept by Tilt, has gone power-mad and is putting the finishing touches to his magnificent octopus - a five-song suite about holidays, Stan Lee, alien life, American breakfasting habits and other things. This is the first National Pep music to be composed with an eye on live performance, so to make it doable it’s mostly written for saxophone, flute, ukulele, steel guitar, mandolin and gospel quartet.