THE legendary John Cooper Clarke is a fan so Ordinary Noise must be doing something right.

The punk poet, who lives in Colchester, gave the band their first national airplay when he played their Backstabber track on his BBC 6 Music show.

Frontman Lou Terry explains: “He saw me playing an acoustic set once and said he really liked my stuff.

“Later I Facebooked his daughter Stella to let her know I was in a band now and that we were playing at the Colchester Arts Centre if she and her dad were interested.

“We couldn’t believe it when he actually turned up.

“He came up to us afterwards and said ‘I’ve paid £6 entry to get in tonight. I don’t normally do that’.”

Picking up a CD at the gig he later told the lads he would play one of their songs on the radio.

Guitarist Ross Connell continues: “He said it would play it in three weeks but it was actually two weeks. Fortunately Jonny’s (Poole, the band’s drummer) mum listened to it by chance and we all caught it later on iPlayer.

“It was pretty awesome that he played it. Before it went on he said ‘these guys are going to be mega’ and then afterwards played a Buddy Holly track, which was very cool.”

Colchester gig-goers will have been familiar with frontman Lou, who played a number of high profile slots as an acoustic singer/songwriter before joining the band.

Lou says: “Actually I always wanted to be in a band. The reason I started the solo stuff was because I was in a band and they didn’t want to do a gig so I ended up doing it on my own.”

Soon after starting at the Colchester Sixth Form College he met up with Ross after a gig.

“I really liked Lou’s stuff,” Ross explains, “so I went up to him and asked him whether he wanted to meet up and work on some songs together.”

And when the news went out Lou and Ross were looking for a drummer and bass player fellow sixth form students, Jonny and Malachi Siner-Cheverst, who played together in local jazz outfit Slacknote, answered their call.

That was about a year and a half ago and pretty quickly they started to make a name for themselves with their punchy riffs and edgy lyrics.

It also helped they had a rather unique performance style which includes drummer Jonny switching sticks for the saxophone and bass player Malachi, who takes up the cello for some of the band’s songs.

This weekend they’re playing across the Suffolk border with Dingus Khan.

Lou adds: “We’ve had a few cool things happen to us since we started but one of the coolest was when Dingus Khan mentioned us as a band to watch out for.

“They’re a band we really like so the fact they like us is a pretty big deal.”