VW secure prestigious spot at Butlins' Great British Alternative Music Festival - Skeggy here we

Your old mates VW are hoping to make it a hat-trick for local bands when they play the Introducing Stage at the prestigious Great British Alternative Music Festival at Butlin's, Skegness, in October.

So get your suntan lotion, bucket and spade and paracetamols ready and join us there!

The festival will pull thousands of fans to Skeggy over the weekend of October 5th-8th with Boomtown Rats, Sham 69, New Model Army, The Wildhearts, The Blockheads, The Exploited, UK Subs, The Rezillos, Bad Manners, Dirtbox Disco, Spear of Destiny and The Professionals on the main stages.

At the same time 12 other bands are invited each year to play the Introducing Stage with the audience invited to vote for their favourite each day to go forward onto the main stage the following year. And this time around we are one of them!

Already our old mates Resistance 77 won a place on the main stage last year to fly the local flag while our other mates Hung Like Hanratty followed suit with a storming gig for a place this year.

Joining Hanratty on the main stage from last year's winners are Hands Off Gretel and No Thrills.

Now we want to make it a local treble - with the help of your votes!

We will be first onstage on the afternoon of Sunday, 8th October and we are up against Birmingham punk veterans Drongos for Europe, New Zealand outfit Desperate Measures and Congleton-based Vomit.

Lengthmen, Jack the Lad, Blue Carpet Band and The Reletics are Friday's contenders while Saturday sees Pete Bentham and The Dinner Ladies, Bus Station Loonies, Delinquents and Witchdoktors.

We are absolutely chuffed to bits to get on the bill at all with so many good bands from around the world battling for a spot and so few available.

Anything now will be a bonus. We know we are up against some high quality bands. But we do have a really good following in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire and, being at Skegness, we are hoping to have a big local support there.

If we can win over a few new fans as well as those we already have on the day, we are confident we could do well. You know what to do with your voting tokens!

We are certainly going to be the only band who hand out hundreds of yellow plastic ducks to the audience to pelt us with! That's going to be spectacular there.

Before then we have a string of festivals to play including Strummercamp at Oldham Rugby Club, Rock & Bike Festival at Carnfield Hall, South Normanton, and Blyth Power Ashes at Tewksbury.

For tickets to the big Butlins weekend, visit www.bigweekends.com/the-weekends/specialist-music-weekends/great-british-alternative-music-festival.aspx.