Scarlet Division
Scarlet Division was a band formed by Jamie Oliver (at age 13) and his friend Leigh Haggerwood in 1989. With Jamie on drums and Leigh on keyboards, the two friends joined forces with vocalist Louise Brannan, bassist James Bejon and a guitarist.
They played many gigs in the United Kingdom throughout the 1990s.
In 1996, Jamie was spotted by television producer Patricia Llewellyn doing his day job — cooking at the The River Café in London, where she was shooting a documentary film.1 He was soon offered his own TV show called The [...] Chef and the band (who were already playing the London gig circuit) were asked to perform in an episode.
Soon after, Sony Music offshoot "S2" signed them for a two single deal after hearing the band's latest song, "Sundial". In October 2000, "Sundial" was released as a single and made position number 42 in the UK pop charts. The song was written by Leigh Haggerwood, and the video was filmed in a field in Essex. It was directed by Tom Carty, the famous Guinness and Nike advert director.
Jamie Oliver said of the video:
Unfortunately, lack of radio play meant that relatively few people heard "Sundial" and chart position 42 was perceived as a disappointing result, considering Jamie's fame as a television chef. However this result could have been due to the record company's attempts to cash-in on Jamie's fame. British TV and radio stations would not take the band seriously because they assumed Jamie was jumping on the pop band wagon - not realising that the band had actually been together for ten years.
Sony soon discontinued their promotional efforts, and Jamie's agents decided he should quit the band. The rest of Scarlet Division went their own ways.
The driving force behind Scarlet Division had always been Leigh Haggerwood, a talented composer in his own right. He was already working on music for TV and film and in 2002 Jamie asked him to compose the theme music for his new television show, Oliver's Twist.
The song was called "Just The Start" and it proved to be very popular all over Dagenham. This prompted the band to get back together and perform it in the second episode of the first season of Oliver's Twist (the episode being entitled "Scarlet Division"). There was also a later appearance in a series 2 episode called "The Session" where they performed the song "The Kiss Of Summer".