PRESS INFORMATION PACK
TX: SPRING 2006, 12.30pm 13 X 30 MINS

TOTALLY FRANK: TOTALLY 2006

“They’re young, hot and talented. The UK’s next big thing.”
Company Magazine

“Like it or not the group are destined for success.”
David Chater, The Times

“New girlband Frank are taking the TV world by storm.”
Smash Hits

Frank are four hugely talented girls tipped for a massive year ahead in 2006. With the second series of their hit drama due to hit our screens this Spring and their debut album due for release this summer, the sky really is the limit. The girls have been signed by Polydor, home to some of the most successful new musical talent to emerge in this country in the past three years. The label’s UK signings include the multi platinum-selling artists Scissor Sisters, Kaiser Chiefs and Ms Dynamite. The girls are fresh back from LA, where they’ve been recording and co-writing their debut album with prolific music producer Brian Higgins, whose credits include Texas, New Order and The Sugababes. Frank’s own brand of electro-based guitar pop, has been drawn from their individual influences. Watch out for them in 2006 when they’ll be releasing their debut album and announcing their live gig schedule.

For those who can’t wait until the release of their first single, next month UK fans will be given exclusive access to one of the tracks from their debut album as a download from their website.

TOTALLY FRANK – SECOND SERIES

Following the success of their debut series, Totally Frank returns to our screens this Spring with an all-new 13-part drama series. Packed with gripping storylines, candid humour and
more music from their forthcoming album, the second series shifts up a gear as the flat-sharing quartet struggle to stay together in the face of pressure from all sides.

Described by critics as “The best thing to arrive on T4 since Steve Jones’ six-pack”*, the new series will once again be screened on Channel 4’s T4 zone as well as on E4. Through the website viewers will also be given exclusive behind the scenes access to Frank, the band; songs, rehearsals, tour footage and video shoots, together with selected downloads on their mobile phones.

Series one charted the lives of these four twenty-something hopefuls struggling to launch their music careers from the very bottom rung. From the unpaid gigs, the graveyard shifts in the recording studio and a visits from the bailiffs, Tasha (Lauren Blake) Charlie (Bryony Afferson), Neve (Hayley Angel Wardle) and Flo (Helena Dowling) were determined to make music on their own terms at all costs. That was, at least, until the chance of a glittering solo career and lucrative record deal enticed Tasha into leaving the band at the end of series one, leaving Neve Charlie and Flo to face the harsh reality that their dream has come crashing down.

How can the girls get back together after their devastating break up in series one? How can they win back each other’s love and trust, enough to make music again? Series two will send Tasha, Neve, Charlie and Flo on a heartfelt and hilarious journey towards musical success on their own terms. Whatever happens, it’s sure to be one hell of a ride and T4 viewers will be with the girls every step of their rollercoaster journey.
Music once again provides the backdrop; all played and performed by the band themselves and described by critics as “beats you’d struggle not to shake a leg to; hooks that seem destined to worm their way into your memory banks.” Series two presents some punch-packing issues, from emotional abuse and low self esteem to family and friendship loyalties and ultimately death. It also delves deep inside each of the characters on a level viewers will find emotional and compelling.

“Channel 4’s new band ticks all the right boxes. Totally Frank is really rather good.”
Dan Cairns, Sunday Times Culture

“We’re going to be glued to Totally Frank.”
Mizz Magazine

“I think Frank are great, I think they’re going to do really, really well.”
Judy Finnigan

Press contact:
Taylor Herring PR. Joanna Stapleton Joanna.Stapleton@taylorherring.com
or Hayley Hamburg Hayley.Hamburg@taylorherring.com on 0208 206 5151

Picture Requests to: Rallin@channel4.co.uk

* Sugar Magazine, November 2005

 

Band and Cast Biographies

Bryony Afferson – AKA “Charlie” – Guitar
Yorkshire born Bryony, aged 22 from Barnsley, began exercising her musical and entertainment talents from a very early age. At 5 years-old she was united with her first love – the trumpet – an affair she continued until she was 17 years-old. From the age of 12 she also played the piano and the guitar and started song-writing. Bryony spent much of her youth gigging around Yorkshire and pursuing her love of song-writing. Her acting talents have seen her take several lead roles in school productions and go on to achieve a degree in Acting from E15 Acting School. Her idols include female songwriter Tori Amos. Her claim to fame is that she once got on stage with Skin at a Skunk Anansie gig. She has recently got into Ray La Montagne. On a recent trip to LA, where Frank have been recording their new album, Bryony met legendary Trip Hop artist, Tricky, and spent a good hour taking the mickey out of him, before realising who he was.

Hayley Angel Wardle – AKA “Neve” – Drums
Hayley, aged 22 from London studied acting at the Anna Scher theatre as well as music. Hayley has acted in various productions and appeared in the film ‘The Stretch’ as Leslie Grantham and Anita Dobson’s daughter. Hayley has also written some of her own music and describes her music tastes as “eclectic”. She enjoys listening to Joy Division, Velvet Underground, Bjork, Miles Davis and Gil Scott-Heron and her favourite all time tune is Transmission by Joy Division. She counts one of her most bizarre experiences as dressing as Ozzy Osborne for one of the episodes in Totally Frank, but says it was “hilariously entertaining and a lot of fun”. Her middle name is Angel, although as Frank’s drummer, she’s more akin to being one of hell’s angels!

Helena Dowling – AKA “Flo” – Keyboards
22 year-old Helena grew up in Tamworth before moving to London to work as an actress and pursue her music aspirations. As a child, Helena’s hunger to entertain and perform saw her study acting, dancing and music at the London Studio and she went on to achieve a BA (Hons) in Dance Theatre at the London Studio Centre. Musically, her instruments of choice were the piano and the saxophone, which she began playing at the tender age of 9 years-old. She’s transferred these skills across to take up her position as the keyboard player of Frank. Prior to joining Frank, Helena’s claim to fame moment was dancing on Kylie’s ‘Chocolate’ video, where she worked alongside the pop-starlet, taking advice, direction and, above all, inspiration. Helena has also danced in Rachel Steven’s pop videos. Helena adores hip hop, funk, jazz, soul and electronica music and particularly likes Mazzy Star, Goldfrapp, Jurassic 5 and Roots.

Lauren Blake – AKA “Tasha” – Lead singer
22 year-old Lauren is Frank’s lead singer. The eldest of seven children, Lauren was born and raised in Liverpool and displayed a musical talent and a desire to perform from an early age. Whilst at school, she tried her hand at the violin and the guitar, but discovered her true passion when she joined the school choir. Lauren has written her own songs, modelled and spent two years singing with an R’n’B girl group, gigging around the Liverpool circuit. Lauren 21is currently learning to play bass guitar and listening to the James Blunt album ‘Back to Bedlam’. She enjoys listening to a diverse genre of music influences, from R&B and Pop to Indie, Soul and Dance and is inspired by artists such as queen of reinvention, Madonna.
About Totally Frank…

Tasha (Lead Singer)

DRIVING FORCE…22-year-old Tasha’s got bounce. She’s the front woman, and the emotional driving force behind the band: the one with the vision and the sheer unstoppable enthusiasm to pull this thing off.

IMPETUOUS AND NAÏVE…Tasha doesn’t know the rules – so she’s not afraid of anything. She truly believes that this motley bunch of girls can be a world-class band. Maybe she’s a fantasist, maybe she’s not been around long enough to get cynical yet… or maybe she’s actually right.

THE BAND IS EVERYTHING… Tasha has always maintained she doesn’t just want to make it on her own, she wants to do it as part of a team. From the outset it was all about the band. Her friends are her family and her family are her friends. Secretly, Tasha is afraid of being alone. She’s deeply girlie – loves hanging out with her mates, and never grew out of sleepovers. She’d paint any of the girls’ nails for them at the drop of a hat.

MUM… Tasha is very close to her free-spirited and unconventional mum, who’s more like her best mate. Tasha has always looked after her mum as much as her mum looked after her. As the band take the central place in her life, Tasha automatically takes on the ‘mum’ role to her new friends, and they come to rely on her to sort everything out for them. Not that she’s mumsy – Tasha’s got a kiddie side of her own: she loves dressing up. You can never have too much sparkle – in every sense of the word.

MEN…In series one Tasha dosen’t have a boyfriend - she didn’t have time, she had a band to run. She doesn’t assume she needs a man in her life to make her happy. Men have never been a priority for Tasha, it’s always been her and her mum, with men a poor second. So, for such a confident outgoing personality, Tasha is surprisingly inexperienced in matters of romance…

Neve (Drummer)

Tasha may have the energy, but it’s 22-year-old Neve who has the experience, the nous, and the toughness to make Tasha’s big ideas happen.

SEASONED MUSICIAN…Neve’s the one with the cred. She seems to know everything about every band that ever was. She’s spent years gigging. She has been the drummer in a couple of bands before that ‘nearly made it’ but didn’t.

FAMILY… From a rough background, Neve’s got an alcoholic Dad. She’s the oldest of a very big dysfunctional family. She comes from the school of hard knocks. She’s determined to make it - because she’s not going back where she came from, at any cost. Her family have always been disinterested in her, too wrapped up in their own dysfunction. She would never admit to a secret hope they might notice her once she starts getting some success.

DEVIL MAY CARE STREAK…The trouble is that her steely professionalism by day is undermined by a dangerous devil-may-care streak after she’s had a few too many drinks. She has a bad habit of falling into bed with all the wrong people. This may make her seem a bit of a mess but if you met the rest of her family, you’d realise she’s turned out pretty normal. She’s not let her background drag her down so far, but if the pressure ever gets too much, you never know what she might end up doing…

MUSIC … Neve loses control in her music too – that’s where all her emotions go, and not just when she’s thrashing the life out of her drum kit: she is a powerful songwriter with something to say.

HIGH STAKES…. There is a whiff of desperation about her that the other girls don’t have – this is life or death for her, whereas for Tasha it’s still more of a fun game. She may hide her dreams under a cool exterior, but if the other girls balls things up, she will find it hard to forgive them…

Flo (Keyboards)

THE BABY… Flo’s the baby of the group, even though at 22 she’s the same age as the others. She lives in the moment, goes with the flow. Sweet-natured and inoffensive, sometimes gauche, Flo tends to get teased by the others, but it’s impossible not to warm to her unaffected charm. However Flo does have some bizarre hidden talents, including the DIY skills to knock up a DVD rack from scratch in a moment, and the electrical savvy to wire the whole flat with surround sound...

JASON…Flo’s fiancé, Jason, looks after her – he was the one who put her up for the TV talent competition. Something he may live to regret. While Flo is innocent in the ways of the world, she’s wild in the sack. Jason and Flo have a very imaginative and experimental sex life. Flo agonises about her relationship with Jason. She used to want to be with him more than anything else in the world… and then she discovered being in a band. Will Flo be able to have Jason AND the rock-and-roll lifestyle?

FAMILY…From a safe, solid working class family, Flo lived with her parents until she moved in with the girls. She’s still the ‘baby’ at home too, and a bit of a “daddy’s girl”: she gets her electrical savvy from her dad. Her engagement to Jason is very important to her family - he’s like a son to them, and drinks with Flo’s dad in their local. Flo is torn between the grounded world of her family and this new vertiginous music world. She would be mortified if her family thought “you’ve changed”… But at the same time, half of her wants to change.

THE MUSIC…Very musically talented, but laid back about her playing, Flo loves it on stage and never gets nervous – it’s a big party to her that will end one day, but she’s enjoying it while it lasts. Flo is also an electrical whizz kid, loves sampling and messing around with wiring, and regularly tinkers with the circuitry of her vintage 80’s keyboard (a Roland Jupiter Six Synthesizer). She’s not ambitious about her music – at least not at the start. But once she gets the ‘band bug’ the things that seemed so important before – her family and her fiancée – start to fade into the background…

Charlie (Guitar)

A 21-year-old dropped-out art student, Charlie is totally into herself. Charlie wants to be a successful musician, and that’s more important to her than being best mates with the other girls. Which is lucky, because she’s the sort of girl it takes a long time to get to know… and even longer to get to like. But is she really as arrogant as she at first appears?

FAMILY…From a more middle-class background than the other girls. Charlie’s parents may live in a small ‘Wimpey’ house, but they want their only child to make it to the next notch up the social ladder and have poured all their energies into her education and betterment. Meanwhile Charlie dismisses them as dull. Her deepest fear in life is that people might think she’s boring. Her family background has been sterile and Charlie has not been encouraged to perform. Her mother finds it very difficult to express love for her daughter and although her dad is more loving towards her, Charlie looks down on him for being so bullied by her mum. Dad was once in a band himself, and bought Charlie her guitar.

MUSIC…Charlie’s been writing painful ballads since she was 11, sometimes showcasing them at family parties. She is extremely musically talented but her pretentiousness stops her being as cool as she thinks she is. She knows her bands and works hard on “her music”, but is insecure about her own song writing around Neve, whose credibility intimidates her. She is also a bit of a guitar nerd and owns countless pedals for every possible sound effect. She covets the best of the best in guitars.

SOLO ARTIST…Charlie always planned a solo career for herself, and isn’t great at being a girl’s girl. She doesn’t know the unwritten rules of sisterhood, like the one that says you don’t steal your mates’ pulls. Charlie is deeply competitive, but that comes from insecurity. Only when Charlie gets her heart broken will she allow the other girls to see her vulnerable side. Her journey with the girls is to slowly trust them and become a team-player.

MEN…For Charlie, pulling men is all about showing off. But once she gets involved in a relationship, her insecurity makes her put her man on a pedestal. She’s the type to keep pursuing a man who has given her the brush off and not realise how humiliating it is… even when the other girls point it out. Especially when the other girls point it out
Notes To Editors

About The Programme

· Totally Frank is an Initial production for Channel 4 Television.

· Initial’s credits include; The UK Music Hall of Fame (Channel 4), Band Aid 20 (BBC ONE), Comic Relief Does Fame Academy (BBC1; BBC THREE), S Club 7 in LA (BBC ONE), Miami 7 (BBC ONE) and The Orange British Academy Film Awards (BBC 1).

· Initial is part of Endemol - the world’s biggest independent content creator, behind record-breaking hits such as Big Brother.

· The series “Totally Frank” is executive produced by Christopher Pilkington and Malcolm Gerrie whose credits include The Tube (Channel 4), The White Room (Channel 4), producer is Sophie Gardiner (Eureka Street) and script producer is Heather Tyrrell (Byker Grove).

· Directors include Paul Whittington and Brendan Grant. Writers include Jack Lothian (Late Night Shopping), Gary Parker (As If ) Asch Ditta (No Angels), Holly Phillips (The Playground) and Harry Wootliff (Hotel Babylon). Script editor is Sara Murray (Doctor Zhivago).

· Other cast members include; Kieran O’Brien (Nine Songs and Cracker) as Joe the barman, and introducing new talent Craig Kelly (Hotel Babylon and Queer as Folk) and Danny Webb (Life Begins and Into the Void)

· The series was commissioned for Channel 4 by Jules Oldroyd, Head of Scheduling, T4 & Music and Graeme Mason, MD of 4Rights.

· Totally Frank’s website can be accessed at
http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/T/totally_frank/

About Polydor Records

· The label’s UK signings include the multi platinum-selling new artists Scissor Sisters, Snow Patrol, Kaiser Chiefs and Ms Dynamite.

· Its international roster includes some of the biggest and most exciting names in music, Eminem, Gwen Stefani, 50 Cent, Beck and Queens of the Stone Age among them. Polydor is run by joint managing directors Colin Barlow and David Joseph.

· It is owned by Universal Music, the world’s leading music company with wholly-owned record operations or licensees in 77 countries around the world.

Artist Representation

· James Grant Music Management