The Banned
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The Banned was a fictional band in the popular BBC soap opera EastEnders.
[edit] History
The band started life off-screen, where Simon Wicks and Eddie Hunter were members. Before Simon came to Walford, he had borrowed money from loan sharks and was left owing them huge amounts of money that he couldn't pay back. Eddie was happy to leave Simon with the debt and disappeared to work as a redcoat in Clacton, so the band dissolved. However, when the debts were finally repaid, Simon decided to regroup and he contacted Eddie to rejoin the band.
The reformed group consisted of Simon, Eddie, Kelvin Carpenter, Sharon Watts, Ian Beale and Harry Reynolds. They initially called themselves Dog Market. Eddie was the lead guitarist. Kelvin's girlfriend, Tessa Parker, also wanted to join, but she had no musical talent and was refused membership.
They were due to have their debut in The Queen Vic in August 1986, but after their enormous amplifier fused the electrics in The Vic, publican Den Watts threw them out and shouted after them "You're banned!", after which the group changed their name to The Banned.
Simon and Harry began to disagree with the direction the band was taking. Harry had lost his argument to make the band a vehicle for communist propaganda and blamed Wicksy for the band taking a more practical attitude. They all decided to enter a competition for young musicians, and both Harry and Simon vowed to outdo each other by writing the best song to perform. The rest of the band all preferred Simon's song, which infuriated Harry and he started bad-mouthing him to the rest of the band, saying he was superflous and a closet BBC Radio 2 listener. Simon then declared that the band had to choose between him and Harry, but as Harry owned all the instruments and equipment, they sided with him and Simon quit. Simon wrote his own solo song called "Every Loser Wins". He didn't get very far however, and by the end of the year he'd given up his dream of becoming a musician.
The band decided to use Harry's song, "Something Outa Nothing", for the competition.
The day of the competition came and for some reason Harry, who was a political activist, decided to sabotage their performance by switching the cartridge in the synthesizer, wrecking any hopes the group had of getting anywhere. They were booed off stage, and the rest of the band were furious, particularly when Harry confessed that he did it to show them up.
[edit] Trivia
- The song "Every Loser Wins" was released as a single in the UK, performed by Nick Berry who played Simon. It reached number one in the UK Singles Chart. "Something Outa Nothing" was also released by Letitia Dean and Paul Medford who played Sharon and Kelvin, reaching number 12.
- Although this storyline spawned two hit singles in the real world, the actual story was not a great success with viewers. EastEnders creators Julia Smith and Tony Holland both felt it lacked credibility and branded it an experiment that failed.
