An nme.com reader has explained how he nudged Chris Martin out of a job by evading London Royal Festival Hall security and stormed the stage at the band's Meltdown gig to take over the mic for ‘Yellow’.
So who was this interloper - a budding star or a pissed-up twat? He was tracked him down via a manhunt posted on nme.com and it turns out he is a bit of both! Patrick Harvey, 26, from Birmingham told NME he’d spent an afternoon drinking wine to give him the Dutch courage to upstage Martin and sing the band’s biggest hit before thousands of fans at the Royal Festival Hall.
He explained that he’d travelled down with his girlfriend to the highbrow event organised by David Bowie and that they’d downed at least three bottles of plonk between them before hitting the beer at the gig.
As the band struck up the first chords of ‘Yellow’, he along with hundreds of other fans sprang from their seats and poured through the auditorium to the front of the stage.
But then the alcohol kicked in. He explained: "I saw them going down, I thought 'I'll have a bit of that', but I went down the right side so I was on my own. I was feeling a bit left out so I thought 'Bollocks to it, I'm getting up on stage man!'.
"I was surprised that no-one was trying to jump on the stage themselves. Because the stage was so low and there was nobody about I just bent my leg and up I was! I think someone came on stage to get me and Chris (Martin) waved him away."
On a spur of the moment, he then grabbed the microphone off Martin and sang the rest of the song to rapturous applause. However, he said his moment as frontman almost passed him by because he was trying to get his girlfriend to join him.
"I wasn't really paying much attention." He joked. "Because my girlfriend was up on the balcony I was trying to tell her to come down and join me but she was having none of it! Have I still got a girlfriend? Yeah man, she's well impressed, she's been telling everybody!"
After the gig, Coldplay fans, including Natalie Imbruglia came up to him and congratulated him on a fine vocal performance. "Natalie came up to me and said 'It's Gareth Gates' so I replied 'It's Kylie's friend!'"
Patrick had travelled to the show with his girlfriend, 25-year-old Emma Mylett, who said she was impressed with the song. "I only did it for a bit of a giggle and never expected it to go as far as it did."
Coldplay even gave him the thumbs up with drummer Will Champion telling NME : "Fair play to him!" Coldplay were not able to comment as to whether they would be offering Patrick a permanent position in the band.
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