You are in a band, you are unknown and unsigned, your friend wins £7 million and says, to the world’s press, that she thinks you are fab and wants to give some of it to you! You’d be cock-a-hoop, right? No, says Ben Duffy, 24, of the electro-pop outfit FenechSoler. “The whole thing is really odd. We’re quite concerned because we’ve been going for a while and getting good reviews. Our friend has won a lot of money but we don’t want it to overshadow what we are doing.”

Earlier this week 18-year-old Ianthe Fullagar won £7 million on Euromillions lottery and said at a press conference that alongside donations to charity, trips to Toys’R’Us and Egypt she “is also a big fan of a rock band from Peterborough called FenechSoler. I would love to invest in them.”

So, would it be a good investment for Fullager? FenechSoler are a three piece: two brothers, Ben and Ross Duffy, and a childhood friend, Dan Francis, from east Northamptonshire. The Duffys grew up in a musical home, with instruments lying around and a bluegrass-playing Irish father. Fullagar’s boyfriend is a childhood friend and now lives with the singer, Ben.

The band make silky, melodic, Eighties-influenced electro-pop. This paper recently raved about them, as has gigwise.com, saying: “Sounds bigger than anything currently by the likes of Klaxons et al.” They play In the City in Manchester this weekend and have supported Ladyhawke and Friendly Fires, two buzz bands at the forefront of the indie-dance scene. So, as Duffy says, things are going well. They are also all very cute.

Nevertheless, an A&R man with one of Britain’s leading independent record companies says: “Investing in them would be a bad idea unless it was a charitable gesture. In the current climate, even if she spent the whole lot on them, she could make them successful but not to the point where she’d ever make her money back.”

So, maybe “invest” is not what Fullager should be doing; rather “gift”. In any case Duffy isn’t even convinced that any cash will actually be coming their way. “Ianthe is first and foremost a friend, not an investor. We haven’t had any conversation about it. I don’t even think that it will happen.”

But surely he wouldn’t say no if it did? “It is hard to find money,” he says, “but that’s why we’ve always been self-sufficient and that will always continue. It’s great she won. But it doesn’t mean she’ll give us any.”

So FenechSoler are happy finishing off their album themselves and getting noticed on their own terms. “If this gets people to listen to the music then it’s great. It’s just that it’s a massive deal, suddenly getting this kind of attention.”

Their manager Ben Mawson puts it more bluntly: “They’re nervous about being the ‘Lotto band’.”

www.myspace.com/fenechsoler, www.myspace.com/inthecitymanchester

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