An Irish-inspired band sharing a stage with a reality show duo? Unlikely, but true.

THE idea of a well-known North-East band setting out to perform alongside last year’s oddball Britain’s Got Talent contestants Stavros Flatley seems pretty unlikely – until you meet Mike McGrother, of The Wildcats of Kilkenny.

“When I saw them I thought they were an act after my own heart. They don’t take themselves too seriously and it’s all about making people smile. We were quite lucky to get them,” says Stockton-based electric violinist McGrother.

About 1,000 people have snapped up tickets for the sight of Teesside’s Irish music-inspired songmakers playing alongside father and son Demitrious and Michalakis Lagi, who play strictly for laughs as “two fat versions of a Greek Michael Flatley”.

“Most of the big shows we do, we work with Ten Feet Tall (the Middlesbrough promoters) and at first the company said ‘you’re joking’ but I talked Graham Ramsay (Ten Feet Tall’s boss) round and he got on the phone pretty quickly. They had over 200 shows booked and we had to move fairly fast,” he says.

The Middlesbrough Town Hall booking was delayed from March 13 until April 24 because Stavros Flatley were offered a tour of China, a country which the Wildcats have toured with success.

“I know they’ll have had an amazing time in China because it’s a completely different culture. We do a lot of audience participation and had to adapt that because the first time we played it was just complete silence.

Then there was permission given to applaud. So what we did was adapt to giving them some singalong classics and we ended up with extracts from the Sound of Music and The Wildcats of Kilkenny playing Edelweiss, with 10,000 people going mental.

It’s weird, so perhaps they will get Stavros,” says McGrother.

There is a finale planned at Middlesbrough which also involves Bob Marley tribute act Zion, and aims to be a Teesside version of Lord of the Dance. “I think on the night you may see the two things combine, but I’m not going to promise,” he says.

The Wildcats have spent 17 years building a reputation as one of Teesside’s best live entertainers, but all four still hold down full-time jobs.

McGrother is a creative teaching partner in schools, pianist Danny Allinson is also in education while drummer Simon Wigington is a civil servant and double bass Bruce Rollo is an ambulance technician.

“I think it’s dangerous to categorise entertainment as just one thing and I’m always amazed by Britain’s Got Talent and wonder why the Diversity of this world weren’t already picked up somewhere else. But I do worry about someone like Susan Boyle. I used to teach performing arts and I’ve taught people with stronger voices than her who have gone on to chorus work in the West End. But this is being shot into that international phenomenon that seems like the Truman Show and out of control.

“Most of these novelty entertainers know they’ve got a shelf-life of about a year and, in many ways, it’s not their fault. But I couldn’t ever imagine Stavros Flatley getting a West End residency. For the delusional ones it’s not reality and I don’t know why they call it Reality TV.”

Reality for The Wildcats is that the band admit to having rehearsed only five times in their history. “I turn up at a gig and give the others the basic formula. We are very much a piece of music where everyone joins in,” says McGrother about an act which features versions of The Proclaimers’ 500 Miles, Irish folk tunes and Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry Be Happy.

■ The Wildcats of Kilkenny, Stavros Flatley and Zion, Middlesbrough Town Hall, April 24. Tickets: £15. Box Office: 01642-729729 or 01642-815181