The Vichy Government - gigs

Vichy rounded off the penultimate night of the Holylands Arts Festival with a gig at this IRA bar. The previous evening, Jamie's Love Your Enemies club had been brought to an abrupt end by a fistfight between the regulars. Sadly there was no repeat performance at the gig, despite Suspended On Full Pay being dedicated to the Bloody Sunday soldiers. Live debut for Poor Little Chelsea Fan, the Utopians and Velma also played. Intro music: Billy Joel, We Didn't Start The Fire

The Angular disco having bade farewell to New Cross, Vichy played a free show at this trendy Shoreditch bar at the behest of Vice magazine before taking a well-earned rest. Joe Violets did the sound and Alex Violets the DJing. Live debut for future terrace anthem Poor Little Chelsea Fan. Intro music: Lloyd & Croft, Theme From Allo Allo

Returning to Soho's most intimate venue (after the toilets in Gerry's), Vichy supported 586 for the first time at We Got Bored. The Do-Nothing Kings also played and the night was kicked off by a memorably ear-splitting London debut for The Resistance. Intro music: David Bowie, The Laughing Gnome

Another huge artistic triumph in everyone's favourite back room of a Cambridge pub. The Uterus Women played under their new guise of The Utopians and the Resistance also shone.

This austere Victorian church converted into a Hoxton art gallery was the setting for the highly entertaining Turn To The Left fashion show. Vichy "entertained" the troops at the bar, with support from Tits of Death and someone from Chicks on Speed. Intro music: Wild Cherry, Play That Funky Music

Another raid on the North, this time we played a 500-year-old riverside pub. In support, local boys and Devo soundalikes Odd Shaped Head packed the place out, but the end of their set signalled a mass migration to the bar, from which the audience never returned- back to earth with a thud. The gig was noteworthy for being the first occasion on which we have been sent to a hotel. We'd have thrown the TV out the window but Channel 5 were showing John Barnes' Football Night.

This brief but well-deserved respite from the toilet circuit found Vichy opening for Jamie's boyhood heroes The Auteurs, with an acoutsic interlude from the man in the white suit, John Moore. We had our own dressing room, and a great big mirror with white light bulbs all around it- about time. Did we play Luke Haines Is Dead? Ask a stupid question.

A rare sighting of Vichy in the North thanks to the Feedback club night, this show took place in a function room upstairs of an old man pub. The Elvis impersonator downstairs put up a fight, but we managed to make ourselves heard, as did local cabaret queens Cogna. Intro music: Jacques Brel, Le Moribond

Two gigs across the hottest weekend of the year gave a "foreign legion" feel to Vichy's greatest hits set here, at an all-dayer curated by the delightful Clare James Clare. An ecletic bill inculded noisy Japanese kids, Scandinavian Coldplayists, and our new favourite band the Teenage Mutants. Live debut for The Blues Will Have To Wait. Intro music: Microdisney, Sun