Hi all.

As many of you that watched/donated/slagged off The Peoples Voice may know, my Dad has severed ties with the organisation.

http://www.davidicke.com/headlines/the-peoples-voice/

They state that he is no longer required, and thus I figure that The Banned is no longer required either. I was hoping that once the station got back into a better financial state, we would be able to bring the music show back. But for a while I have accepted that is very unlikely, and this, to me, confirms that.

It was a pleasure to be involved with The Banned, and I hope we made a little difference to the bands we featured. We had lots of excellent artists and I would like to say thanks to all of them.

Also, a massive thanks to everyone involved in the show. We created a pretty good team, and ironically, by the time it went off air, we had the show nailed in terms of filming/format.

TPV obviously had its draw backs personally. Mainly the lies and nonsense that surrounded it, and the rubbish allegations made against myself and others.

Given the show isn’t returning, I feel I should set a few things straight.

The Banned was MY idea. The format of the show was MY idea, along with great input from Amy James, and alot of the bands were sourced by small labels and promoters that I brought to the project. It was even MY idea that I should NEVER perform on The Banned, or have any of my own music featured on it, as I didn’t want to use it to promote myself. Hell, the name The Banned was MY idea.

I pitched the show like all the others. So there was no ‘nepotism’ involved. I wasn’t handed a presenting job just ‘because’.

Other nonsense that went around was that my Dad was keeping his family in work, and paid by TPV donations.

I NEVER received a PENNY from TPV as payment for presenting/co-writing/founding the show. I volunteered. I used to drive a 320 mile round trip every Thursday to film, getting home to Derby at 2am, only to get up and work the following morning.

I lost several gigs myself, including a fantastic (and rather lucrative) tour of the Scottish Islands, because I was filming The Banned.

I lost an appearance on Soccer AM with my fellow Derby County fans, as I was needed to film some clips for TPV adverts.

So if any of you do frequent some of these online forums, that spout nonsense, you can put them straight on these facts.

As for the end of The Banned, I am sad. I felt it had a lot of potential, and having spoken to bands since they appeared, they have stated that they got gigs/interviews as a result of being on the show. The Struts, our first ever band on the show, just supported The Rolling Stones at Park de Prince in Paris. What’s that? 90,000 people?

Maybe we’ll have another chance, another time, in another place.

x