our day by day fete line up

There's going to be plenty of stuff to do at our fete on both the Saturday and Sunday so it might be worth planning what you want to fit in over a tea and biscuit before hand. So here's a day by day, hour by hour guide to what we have lined up over the weekend.

There'll also be loads of other stuff dotted about which isn't mentioned above. Like ferret racing, smoothie tasting, knitting and tea drinking, come and say hello to innocent area, face painting, petting zoo, funfair rides, kids assault course, a flea circus, a big farmers' market , real ale, cider and other bars, and much more.

christian prommer's drumlesson & son of dave

Thought we'd show you some more of the people who will be playing at the fete. First, Christian Prommer's Drumlesson, who plough the furrow where jazz meets classic house.

They do a mean drum solo too.

And here's Son of Dave doing his one man thing.

angus and julia stone

They're playing at our village fete in ten days time and they even wrote a song about a mango tree. Very considerate. Nice video too.

the bananaphone

If I had to choose one question I've been asked the most since working at innocent, it would have to be "Is there really a bananaphone?" The simple answer is yes. And although it's technically not the phone we speak into, it's what rings out to the whole of Fruit Towers. And it is shaped like a banana. In fact, this is what it looks like.

If novelty phones are your thing, you can see more here

Lots of people do ring us for a chat, and you get to speak to a real, live person too (as long as it's during office hours, we haven't quite reached a 24 hour hotline just yet).  If you would like to get in touch, the number is on the bottle.

There's even a song all about it, by a nice man called Raffi. If you like your songs fairly repetitive, you'll love this one. You can listen and indeed watch a slightly strange video with a man who isn't Raffi above.

The sad news is, however, when we were having a bit of a move around in the office, the bananaphone was put somewhere "safe." You know, like the safe place you put your Bucks Fizz limited edition record to, and then can never remember where that safe place was. It's safe, but so safe you can't find it. We'll keep hunting and fingers crossed, we'll find it again.

please say hello to the innocent band

Here's a very sneak preview of the innocent band who played for us here at Fruit Towers last Thursday lunch time. They'll be playing again at our village fete on both the Saturday and Sunday so keep your eye out for them on the programme.

Every single member works here Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm, so we're quite proud that they've managed to pull together a fully fledged 9 piece band in such a short space of time. In the blurry distance, you can probably just about make out Caroline, Cass, Ceri and Vic on vocals, Duncan on drums, Jamie M and Tim S on trombone and trumpet respectively, Ruvan on guitar, Malinna on bass and Ben T working his magic on the piano. Oh and there's a tambourine that gets passed around as well. We can't forget the tambourine.

And here's a chicken with his eye on some apples.

Unfortunately, he's already been booked for another engagement this summer.

some video

Mustashrik worked here in our design team last year. He's an illustrator of many talents - check out this video that he's just done for Nizlopi.

something for the weekend

Stevie on the talk box.

And thanks for all of the bottle bottom suggestions this week. We're going to sit down in a minute and go through them all. Might take a while.

number one in the pop charts

Big congratulations have to go to our old friends Scouting For Girls today. With a lot of hard work, a healthy dose of talent and good old fashioned smiles we've seen them go from this, to this, to this. And now we hear they're number one in the album charts.

Well done boys, we're looking forward to the second album.

vegetable orchestra

Watch the very special Vienna Vegetable Orchestra. They're excellent.

the innocent madchester music club

We decided  to start a monthly office gig night, the innocent Madchester music club. Secretly I wanted the opportunity to dig out my Affleck's flares and hoodie from my Wigan college days, so we headed down to The After Show, a night which is the brainwave of Danny McNamara from Embrace.

Who better to meet at the inaugural event than Clint Boon, one time organ player with the Inspiral Carpets (sadly without his magnificent carpet barnet he sported back in the Madchester days).

Clint is our kid Fiona's favourite DJ. You can listen to him on XFM or venture down to South on a Saturday for his Disco Rescue club night where he plays the coolest old and new indie tunes.

Clint's a really friendly, down-to earth guy, as is Romeo from the Magic Numbers, who I bumped into coming out of the loos. I think I'd better point out at this juncture that I wasn't hanging round the Gents trying to track down male rock stars, it just happens that the toilets in Sankey's are unisex.

Romeo told me he drinks our smoothies most days, so he was especially pleased to be given one for an energy boost before going on stage. They played a fantastic gig - it was wicked seeing them in such an intimate venue. After they finished we downed our smoothies and caught the disco bus home.

Congratulations to Danny and all involved as the night was a huge success and we look forward to returning soon.

by our Vic in the Manchester office (pictured with Clint)