The Horne Section

The Horne Section is a British musical comedy band, appearing on radio, television, podcast, and stage. Led by frontman and comedian Alex Horne, the band comprises Joe Auckland (trumpet, banjo, vocals), Mark Brown (saxophone, guitar, vocals), Will Collier (bass, guitar, vocals), Ben Reynolds (drums, vocals) and Ed Sheldrake (keyboards, piano, vocals). The band specialises in comedy/spoof songs in a variety of genres. The band is made up of professional musicians, including two childhood friends of Horne, and first performed together in May 2010, with the current line-up finalised during 2012. The Horne Section have performed at the Edinburgh Festival, as well as touring the UK, and celebrity guests at their shows have included Harry Hill, Simon Amstell, Jimmy Carr, Tim Minchin, Josie Long, Al Murray, and John Oliver as well as musicians including Neil Hannon and Suggs. Their BBC Radio 4 series – Alex Horne Presents the Horne Section – ran for three series from 2012 to 2014. The band have also released five albums of music. The Horne Section Podcast has run since 2018. It was in the top 10 most streamed podcasts from the Deezer platform in 2018, and in April 2019 it was nominated in the 'Best Comedy' category of the British Podcast Awards. The podcast has featured a range of guests including comedians (Greg Davies, Roisin Conaty, Sara Pascoe, Nish Kumar, Adam Buxton), presenters (Richard Osman, Susie Dent, Angellica Bell), sportspeople (Chris Hoy, Lizzy Yarnold), performance poets (Rob Auton, Tim Key, Scroobius Pip), and musicians (Jessie Ware, David Arnold, Robbie Williams). The band featured in The Horne Section Christmas, a nine-minute Christmas-carol themed TV special, shown on Sky Arts in 2015. In April 2018 they recorded a two-hour live show at the London Palladium entitled The Horne Section Television Programme, featuring celebrity guests including Sue Perkins and Nadine Coyle, and broadcast on Dave on 24 May 2018. A Channel 4 six-part programme The Horne Section TV Show was released on 3 November 2022, and is a mostly scripted comedy about the band, combining elements of musical comedy, talk show and sitcom. Horne and the band have often appeared on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown as the dictionary corner guest, and chaired Never Mind the Buzzcocks in November 2012. The Horne Section were the 'house band' for The Last Leg of the Year on New Year's Eve 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021, where they contributed backing music as well as playing a number of their own songs. They provided music for the lockdown-themed series The Last Leg: Locked Down Under and Peter Crouch: Save Our Summer in 2020, and joined Crouch again in 2021 for Crouchy's Year-Late Euros: Live. The band created the theme music for Horne's Taskmaster, as well as for The Guardian's cricket podcast The Spin. These albums (and the single "Grandaddy") are distributed by the group's Bandcamp page. The third album was released on 5 June 2020 featuring songs from the isolation podcasts. The band also have a Patreon which gives subscribers to commission short songs and have shout-outs. Alex Horne Presents The Horne Section was a BBC Radio 4 show that ran from 2011 to 2014 and was broadcast in the 6.30pm weekday comedy slot. The programme followed a similar format to the live Edinburgh festival shows with Horne and the band performing songs and jokes in front of a live audience, with assistance from a special guest - usually from the world of comedy. The pianist during series 1 was former member Joe Stilgoe, and from series 2 onwards was Ed Sheldrake. A bonus episode recorded from the Edinburgh Festival was broadcast later that year. A New Year's Eve Special episode was broadcast at the end of 2013. 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown is a panel show combining the longstanding Channel 4 game format of Countdown with the lively comedy style of 8 Out of 10 Cats. Each episode introduces a celebrity guest as an assistant to etymologist Susie Dent in 'dictionary corner'. Alex Horne was previously a contestant on the main Countdown programme in 2008, and as the author of a book on 'Wordwatching' was a strong candidate for the role. More unusually, he brought his backing band, and The Horne Section contributed various comedy song (and dance) items to the show, as well as stylistic parodies of the 30-second Countdown music. The Horne Section have appeared in a number of episodes (with one appearance as Rachel Riley's assistants) over the course of the show, listed below with reference to the 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown episodes page. The saxophonist 'Pedro' (Pete Grogan) appeared where shown as a deputy for one of the wind players. The Horne Section Television Programme was a two-hour special show recorded for UKTV in front of a live audience at the London Palladium on 18 April 2018. The show was subsequently broadcast on 24 May 2018 on the Dave channel. The show featured a number of guests performing with the band including Sara Pascoe, drag singer Le Gateau Chocolat, Nadine Coyle, Joe Wilkinson and Sue Perkins. The programme interspersed the live performance with supposed studio rehearsal footage in which Horne berates the band for their ability and refuses to allow certain songs to be part of the show. The band appeared in a regular guest slot to close each show of this special series of The Last Leg, originally shown on Fridays at 10pm on Channel 4 during May–June 2020. Though the show was broadcast live from the homes of the hosts in Britain and Australia and via livestream with the individual guests, each member of the band pre-recorded their musical and visual contributions which were combined into a music video. The songs chosen were variously new podcast material, parody, and reworked previous podcast material. The eight-part BBC series Peter Crouch: Save Our Summer was planned during the time of Coronavirus isolation to "bring the biggest names from the worlds of sport, comedy and music back into our lives" for summer 2020. It features Peter Crouch, Maya Jama, and Alex Horne and The Horne Section, with a range of sporting and entertainment guests, and was aired on BBC One during Saturday evenings during June–July 2020. The Horne Section contributed various programme jingles and parody songs, including a closing song of appreciation for some of the "unsung heroes" of the lockdown period. Crouchy's Year-Late Euros: Live was a late-night entertainment chat show, aired on BBC1 during the UEFA Euro 2020 championships. It featured Peter Crouch, Maya Jama, and Alex Horne and The Horne Section. The band provided music, including various football-related parody songs. The Horne Section TV Show is a self-referential comedy about The Horne Section, combining elements of music mockumentary, chat show and sitcom. Mostly scripted (by Alex Horne), the show also includes elements of improvisation, including in the scenes when the band are shown in rehearsal. Songs from the band's repertory are presented both as integral plot devices and as featured music videos, and there is incidental music composed by members of the group (usually pianist Ed Sheldrake). The plot shows Horne's attempts to create a successful TV vehicle for the band, leading out of the backstage world of his TV series Taskmaster, where he is frustrated with being regarded as a mere assistant. Alex Horne and the band members play exaggerated versions of themselves (along with Greg Davies, John Oliver, Rachel Horne, and Reggie Watts), while other actors (including Desiree Burch, Georgia Tennant, Camille Ucan, and Tim Mahendran) play fictional supporting roles. Celebrity guest(s) are invited to the 'chat show' portion as part of the scripted drama. The programme exploits the meta-referential quality of having a nested 'show' with the same name as itself, and makes playful use of devices such as narration, captions, reverse-filming, ironic discrepancies between the fictional 'show' and reality, ambiguities in diegetic music, a crowd-sourced