The Hunger Stage meets… Scouting For Girls

The Hunger Stage is back, and this year it’s bigger than ever.

We’re popping up at festivals up and down the UK, playing games, and even sneaking backstage to chat with some of your favourite artists about all things festival food.

Yup, we’re firm believers that the food at music festivals doesn’t get nearly as much love as it deserves, and we’re on a great big mission to change that.

Throughout the summer, we’ve chatted to rapper Crystal Millz at Parklife and Murder On The Dancefloor hitmaker, Sophie Ellis-Bextor ahead of her Camp Bestival gig. Plus, we grabbed singer Zac Abel before his UK tour. 

But next up it’s time for a good old chin-wag with pop band Scouting For Girls – made up of Roy Stride, Greg Churchouse and Peter Ellard.

Twisted meets… Scouting For Girls (Credit: scoutingforgirls.com)

The Hunger Stage meets… Scouting For Girls

Twisted: What food would you pick to headline the Hunger Stage and why? 

Roy: “Jerk chicken and rice. It’s kind of healthy, but with enough sauce on there, it’s really nice. I’m always very happy with that [at a festival].”

Peter: “Cheese and bread, you can’t go wrong! Reliable, and you can eat it cold.”

Greg: “Mines curry, and you can also eat it cold, which, at a festival is always good. I eat it on the tourbus!”

T: What festival food are you avoiding?

R: “Curry! I would definitely say never have curry….especially if you’re on a tourbus.”

G: “Especially if you’re on a tourbus with me!”

P: “It’s probably the worst thing you could have!”

R: “[Turning to Greg] You shouldn’t ever be allowed to have curry. You shouldn’t be on the tourbus!”

T: At Twisted we’re all about fusion, if you could combine two festival foods together to create a mashup dish, what would that be?

R: “When we were in the studio we used to make some sort of concoction which had, like, mashed potato and sausages in a Yorkshire pudding.”

G: “Oh yeah, we’d basically just get a massive Yorkshire pudding and fill it with potato, sausages, veg and meat. You could just put anything in it [kind of like a roast dinner sandwich!].”

T: If you were a festival food item, what would you be?

R: “Just sweets, because I’m just slightly crazy like I’ve had too much sugar!

“I’m very excitable, like the sour sugary one you can get in pick and mix. Some people love me and some people hate me, and that’s that!”

P: “I was also gonna say sweets cos I’m sweet enough!”

G: “Findus Crispy Pancakes, because I’m quite boring and from the 80s!”

Roy from Scouting For Girls (Credit: Getty)

T: What food and drink is on your rider throughout festival season?

R: “It’s changed a bit over time, you know! We’ve got healthier. It used to just be like there was a lot of wine, port and cheese.

“It was literally a gout tour at one point! And then since we’ve kind of toned it down and there’s a lot of salads and carrot batons.”

G: “It’s literally just chocolate, crisps and some fruit. Maybe a few sandwiches.”

P: “We’re not demanding!”

T: Now on to music, who is the best person you’ve ever seen perform at a festival?

R: “I saw R.E.M at Glastonbury, and Paul McCartney… that was a good one.”

G: “I saw Pulp a couple of weeks ago at Isle Of Wight festival and they were amazing!”

P: “The Wurzels. We played with them, they were brilliant.”

T: If you had to camp with one music legend at a festival who would it be?

R: “Probably Beyonce.”

G: “Stone Roses for me, I reckon. We could get a family sized tent!”

P: “I’d like to go glamping with David Hasselhoff, he’d be a right laugh! Actually, we could share a Premier Inn down the road!”

T: Do you have any pre-show rituals?

R: “There’s this film called Spinal Tap, and when they go into America, the head of a record label makes them do a cheers between all of them and they tap into America.

“So we do that wherever we are, every festival. We tapped into Standon Calling, and we’ve done that before basically every gig for 15 years.

“You have to cheers every single person, tap into everyone and look into their eyes. That’s what we do. We don’t even talk to each other, we just tap and we go.

“If we don’t do it, it’s like everything’s gonna go badly wrong, but there have been a couple of times we haven’t done it and nothing’s happened.

“I don’t know, we just kind of feel like we have to do it now. To be honest, we just do it to piss our tour manager off!”

T: Has anyone thrown anything crazy at you whilst you were on stage (bonus point if it’s a food item…)?

R: “We’ve had cheese thrown at us! It’s not as exciting as it sounds.”

P: “It was a hard cheese!”

G: “Yeah, it wasn’t soft cheese, it was a hard cheddar!”

T: What is the song you’re most enjoying playing at festivals this summer?

P: “I’m really liking the new one, The Missing Part.”

R: “He’s just the drummer, all he knows is the BPM (beats per minute).

“But yeah, it is really great to be playing that song this summer. It’s a good one.”

You can listen to The Missing Part right now, and grab tickets to the Scouting For Girls tour here. 

Featured image: scoutingforgirls.com