The Surprise Guest supporting The Kiltwalk

Kiltwalkers . . . It's official Kelly Jones supports The Kiltwalk, yes that Kelly Jones, the Stereophonics Kelly Jones.

Last night The Kiltwalk were invited to the Grand Central Hotel's Charity Ball 2013 where the wonderful Cash for Kids Charity had been chosen as their Charity Partner for the year.

So Carey, Phil, Richard and Ian (little ole me) got our glad rags on again and headed into town. We were excited and curious, as precisely 7 days earlier we had our inaugural Kiltwalk Burns Supper Awards night, which if we say so ourself was a roaring success and enjoyed by all, however we were keen to see how the "professionals" do it.

The cocktails on arrival were great, the hostesses informative and the great hall looked spectacular, but hey it was the hotels ball, so they could do anything.

Robin Galloway and Lorraine Herbison of Radio Clyde were the compares for the night and very good they were too.

Prior to the meal we felt they were slightly ahead on points. However their overly fancy meal was no contest for our Burns Supper and although we had picked up a few pointers for next years Awards Ceremony, we were rather pleased with ourselves and thought "yeah, we did more than alright" and juuuuusst as we were congratulating ourselves, it happened, they announced their "special guests".

Now Carey had noticed the lighting rig, and I'd picked up the fact that there was some serious amplification going on, but what happened next just floored the entire room, cause the special guests were only the bleedin STEREOPHONICS!!

Carey and I just burst out laughing because as good as The Soul Kings were, they weren't the Stereophonics who turned in a spectacular performance and over the course of around 40 minutes treated us to some of their greatest hits. It was totally surreal but it happened as the picture above proves :-)

Once the band had finished their set and freshened up they decided to join the rest of the guests and were happy to spend time chatting and posing for the odd snap.

It was at this point I nudged Miss Herbison "oot the road" and had a bit of a chat with Kelly who was impressed with what the Kiltwalk was all about and wished us every success in our campaign to raise a million pounds for Scotland's Kids in 2013.

So the bar has been raised, however before the night was over Carey, Richard, Phil and I had already planned who we wanted as our "special guest" next year and in case you've forgotten Phil you've been tasked with delivering, so no pressure then but you did so you probably could :-)