The Jigantics headline this year’s Southdowns Music Festival in Bognor Regis

Martin Fitzgibbon (drums, bass guitar, percussion and vocals) is looking forward to the night, one of a number coming up for the band before Christmas.

“We have been together for about ten years but not this particular line-up. This line-up has been together for about five years and then of course we had the pandemic as well and I suppose we coped with the pandemic in the same way that everyone had cope with the pandemic. A lot of people went down the virtual online stuff route but we really didn't want to do that. Our main aim is always to create some kind of atmosphere and obviously nothing can do that like a proper live gig and so it was worth waiting for that even though obviously we didn't have any choice! But really what the band is all about is creating an atmosphere and everyone going home with a smile on their faces and hopefully that smile will last for a few days.”

Live performance is clearly the band's priority – “even if there's not a lot of money that you can make with live performance these days, and having a CD out, you make even less and that's a shame. And with the download stuff there's no real financial reward either for anyone as an artist... unless of course you are Adele.

“Things have changed a lot in my musical lifetime but then again I'm very old! I started playing when I was eight and I did my first gig when I was 15 and that was in 1965 and I've been playing on and off – fortunately mostly on! – ever since. I never believed that I would be playing this amount of time but it's something that's very hard to give up if you're still enjoying it and the point is obviously that you never actually do it for the money.”

That first gig came as part of a great era, the 60s: “It was a totally different time and a very exciting time. There was a very young and very vibrant growing music scene but it does seem a long time ago!”

Martin did his first recording in the same studio in Denmark Street that the Stones had used to record their first album, and he also had a brush with The Beatles, George Harrison in particular, after they had set up Apple: “I got to speak to George Harrison and he was a lovely guy. He was very insecure. He was recording something and there was me, this bozo who had come in off the street, and he said to me ‘What do you think of this?’ I really liked it but I thought ‘You are George Harrison! Why the hell are you asking me!’ I also got to go to one of his parties at his house in Esher.”

Fun times, and the fun continues with The Jigantics: “The whole idea is that we do it so that we and the audience can have fun. We're very lucky that we get on extremely well with each other and we enjoy our time together on stage and we enjoy our time together off stage. And we've now got a new album happening. It has been in the pipeline for a long time and it's very difficult to predict when it might happen but it might happen before Christmas. The other thing we've got to make a decision about is the format. I don't know if it is still worth releasing it as CD or as just something that you can get online through the website.”