A MUSICIAN who stumbled into a national advertising campaign is today hoping to take the charts by storm.

Bass player Josh Ward, from Steventon, near Abingdon, became the face of phone company T-Mobile in August when a film crew stopped him in the street and asked him what he would do with free text messages.

The 25-year-old, who was on a mission to get some onion bhajis ahead of a gig in London with his band Alphabet Backwards, responded by saying he would start a supergroup with hundreds of people.

The phone company challenged him to do just that and five months later Mr Ward has released a single featuring contributions from 1,107 musicians he rounded up with the aid of text messages and the Internet.

The song – Come With Me by Josh’s Band, which is released by Universal – was written with Mr Ward’s friend George Lightyear, of The Lightyears.

It is written using three chords to be taught to musicians up and down the country as quickly as possible.

“After writing the song we went on tour to five different cities and played with 1,107 people,” said Mr Ward. “They actually managed to record them all and then we took it into the studio, which has been amazing.

“I’d love it to get charted, in the top 75 or something like that.

“I’d actually like to get to number 63 or higher so I can say it’s the most successful song in the history of Steventon, because the people who organise Truck festival got to number 64 with their band Goldrush – so it would lead to some good pub banter.”

Describing his whirlwind few months, the former John Mason School pupil said: “When they first met me they put me on posters and adverts, but this has been absolutely mental.

“The guy at Saatchi (who produced the original adverts) was taking stock of the situation and said to me, ‘you went out to get onion bhajis and bumped into the right people and a few months down the line all this has happened’.”

Although Mr Ward’s contract with T-Mobile ended on Christmas Eve, there appears to be more to come from Josh’s Band.

He said: “I don’t really know what the plan is but I’ve been getting literally hundreds of messages from people saying, ‘you’ve got to come to my town’ and, ‘you’ve got to do more in 2010’.

“It has been absolutely massive and I’m sure it will continue this year, but whether it will still be called Josh’s Band is questionable.”

tairs@oxfordmail.co.uk The single goes on sale today on iTunes and other digital retailers and via myspace.com/joshward84