Stand up: The Other Guys

Yesterday marked the release of the latest video by St Andrews’ very own youtube sensations The Other Guys. This St Andrews girl caught up with Andrew Pattie and Ted Haxby […]


Yesterday marked the release of the latest video by St Andrews’ very own youtube sensations The Other Guys. This St Andrews girl caught up with Andrew Pattie and Ted Haxby at Forties (naturally) in a Stand exclusive.

 

It’s been a busy year for The Other Guys. Last April the infamous Royal Romance video first hit the web and as of yesterday had more than 735,000 hits. They’ve performed at the Dunhill Gala, drank bubbly with Monty and Natasha Kaplinksy, sang at the Savoy for the Muir Maxwell Trust, released an album Barely Regal, and won the St Andrews round of the Voice Festival UK. You’d think they’d be about due for a break but instead they’ve decided to release an all new video of their version of Katy Perry’s hit song in aid of Breast Cancer Care, 120 years after the first St Andrews girls were allowed to enter the university.

So how did it all come about?

“Well I guess we wanted to do a project as the new group so that we had something recorded as to what we’ve done” says Ted. “The idea of this song came about just before the Voice Festival so we then started playing with that idea and another video and it just seemed so well matched to the cause of Breast Cancer Care which has kind of touched the group personally through various members. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to do it.”

“We also wanted to play off the success of the last video without copying it.” Andrew adds “We’re not trying for hundreds of thousands of hits, we’re just hoping we raise a bit of money. All the proceeds are going to Breast Cancer Care.”

Andrew is the one to credit with the idea for the song. It was tossed around at the time of recording the album but it really came into its own before the Voice Festival after the boys recognised the success of parodies and the potential for another video to match. “There’s a big stereotype about what the girls are like in St Andrews” he says, although he’s quick to add that the intention with the video is not to insult anyone. “It’s a bit of a joke as a video, the whole concept is, but there’s a serious purpose behind it” Breast Cancer Care offers support to sufferers providing therapy, information and resources such as bandanas for those battling chemotherapy. “We felt it would be nice to pick a charity that is not so out there.”

Of course, the whole thing is really about the girls and they did not disappoint. A facebook shout out saw around eighty turn up to film with the boys dressed up in their best Barbour and Hunter combinations. A relief as they were worried the rain might put them off. “It’s good the girls got on board as hopefully they’ll send it to their friends and it’ll get more hits and raise more money” says Andrew. “We were surprised they came out to do it for us”.

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Was the female attention the best bit about filming? “ I think it was having free rein over what we could do” Andrew tells me “We knew we wanted to make a video but no one knew how to use a camera and no one knew how to edit”. Luckily help came in the form of filmmaker Maia Fry, who, according to Ted, “Clearly had very different professional standards to what we had. We spent days storyboarding this absolutely absurd video beforehand and showed it to Maia who must have looked at it and been like ‘what on earth?’ [helicopter shots] but she managed to do most of it.”

Aside from the Kate Kennedy Club having the helicopter, did anything else go wrong? “The weather went wrong a lot” says Ted. “It rained the whole weekend” But, as Andrew added “It’s better that they [potential students] realise before they come that it’s usually rainy.”

So was that the aim of the video, to entice the ladies to come to St Andrews? It worked for Ted. “This sounds so sad but Royal Romance was quite a big factor in me coming to St Andrews just because you look at it and you see all the different places. One of the big features of Royal Romance and this video is to try and bring in as many of the things that are completely unique to St Andrews as possible so in a way it’s like a really nice promotional video.” Looks like Ever to Excel has some competition! Andrew says “We wanted it to be a good advert for the university and we feel that the concept of ten young men putting their time and money aside to raise money for a good cause is a good advert in itself”.

It’s true that a lot of time has gone into the production of the video. The song was first arranged in March and had to be recorded in St Andrews before being sent to Boston for mixing and LA for mastering making it a truly international effort to go along with their growing international fanbase. They’ve even been sent a video from Thailand of two kids lip-synching to the whole of Royal Romance through facebook.

So, for the fans, I couldn’t resist asking some quick-fire questions:

Who was the biggest diva during filming? Tarleton.

Who has the best dance moves? Ted.

Who’s the biggest ladies’ man? Callum.

Who spent the most time in the make-up chair? Ted.

Mariah Carey has puppies in her dressing room, what are the essentials on the TOG rider? Pork pies, Asian rugs, curries from Maisha; specifically the red one, not the one from a la carte menu but the cheap one on the student menu.

Out of the other St Andrews/Scottish a cappella groups, who is your favourite? [lots of difficulty with this one] The Hummingbirds have been great this year.

The single is available from today from The Other Guys website. There’s a minimum donation of £1 but you can give as much as you like so dig deep for this great cause. The Other Guys also exclusively revealed to The Stand that they will be doing a UK summer tour so if you’d like to see St Andrews Girls performed live, keep an eye out for details.