We couldn’t believe it when London 2012 contacted us to tell us that our band, We Were Heroes, had won the London 2012 Get Set London Talent competition. It was honestly one of the happiest days of our lives and this opportunity means so much to us. There are five members in the band, all of us from London, and it’s pretty much a dream of ours to one day be a successful band. Being given this chance means everything.

We first heard about the London 2012 Get Set London Roadshow talent contest when we were watching the ITV London news one evening. London 2012, The Mayor of London and the LDA wanted to find a talented London musical act to perform at the Handover Celebrations in London this August, when the Olympic flag is handed to London from Beijing. We decided that we would go for it! We uploaded a video of us performing onto the ITV website and basically crossed our fingers, hoping that we would be picked out. In late-March, we got a phone call to tell us that we were among the acts chosen to perform at the Get Set London roadshow event in Brixton, on the 4th April.



The performance at the roadshow was brilliant fun and we had such a good day. We were performing in the south London audition heat and there were other acts taking part in heats across north, west and east London too, all at various Get Set London roadshow events. ITV filmed the performances and we were informed by the London 2012 judges later that day that ‘We Were Heroes’ was one of the two semi-finalists from the south London heat who’d made it through to the voting stage! Our performance was put up on the ITV website, so that viewers could log on and vote for their favourite act to take part in the final. Incredibly, we were then chosen as one of the finalists!

This meant that on the 6th April, we headed off to play at the final Get Set London Roadshow in Newham, where thousands of people were there to watch us play, which was just an incredible feeling. There was such a buzz at the roadshow and we were so nervous. Plus, by that time, it would have been so depressing to lose out having got this close, so we really gave it everything that we had.



There were four finalists performing at the roadshow in Newham, each of which had been chosen at other Get Set London roadshow events from across the capital; ourselves, Freerun, Hoover Manoeuvres and Natalie Nahai, and again, the deciding vote was left to ITV viewers. Clips of our performances were also played on ITV London Tonight, so to see ourselves on TV was just incredible. Over 10,000 people voted in the competition, so to be part of something so exciting has just been mind-blowing.

On April 18th, we were told that we had won the competition and that ‘We Were Heroes’ will be playing at the Handover Celebrations and representing the London 2012 Games. The idea of performing at such an event is more than we could have hoped for and we can’t thank everyone enough for voting for us. We’re only pleased to have heard about the Get Set London Roadshow, so that we could actually take part in this brilliant opportunity in the first instance.

We hope that when August 24th arrives, people will come to the Handover Celebrations to support us in what will be the best gig of our lives so far.