EMF and their Portsmouth bass player aim for a Christmas number one with Stephen Fry-featuring single Hello People

The track Hello People is a call to arms with tolerance against the hateful myths of immigration.

And the band, who scored huge hits in the 1990s withUnbelieavable, I Believer and I’m a Believer, include Stevey Marsh from Portsmouth as their bass player.

Stevey played in Portsmouth-based bands including Thirst, Red Letter Day and Autons before being tapped up to join the band on tour and has been an official member since 2012.

The song is the lead single from the band’s forthcoming album The Beauty and The Chaos, due out early next year.

Stevey, who lives in Stamshaw, says: “We're really proud of the album – we've had most of the songs written for a while and we met up earlier this year Yorkshire and spent a weekend playing it all out loud together, getting off on it, changing bits and arranging it and it sounds great.

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“It was all ready to be released, and this is a nice problem to have, but we were hard-pushed to pick the lead single. When Stephen said he was up for putting his vocals on top of this song, it was meant to be."

Stephen had previously appeared on a track on the band’s 1995 album Cha Cha Cha, so they thought about contacting him to see if he’d like to team up again.

“It was a speech he already had,” explains Stevey, “so we sampled bits of that where he's talking about the plus points of immigration and being nice to people, which is kind of what the song's about.

"We planned to have it released on December 15th anyway, but there's been a couple of Facebook groups that have sprung up out of nowhere saying 'let's make it the Christmas number one', and they've stirred up a bit of controversy which is nice to see. We've had good things said about it by decent people, and then this anti stuff from far-right supporters, which has only fuelled normal people to want to buy it!

“It's an important message to get out there, but there's no political agenda behind it. The message is just be nice and decent to all people – it's a song about love. I don't know why that's so controversial and has caused some people to be upset! It's been quite a turbulent time these last few years and it just feels like we all need to take a step back.

"We haven't got our hearts set on it being Christmas number one, but even top 40 would be lovely. But it's given it a reason to be out there, people are listening to it and talking about it.”

Hello People is released on December 15 and can be preordered digitally and as a CD single from emf-theband.com/store.