A councillor will be in the pink today when he swaps City Hall for rock stardom.

Councillor Paul Barker, of Steeton, will be stepping out on stage at Pennington's nightclub tonight for the first live show with his new Pink Floyd cover band, Off The Wall.

And the five-piece group hopes the home town gig will prove a springboard to a career touring the world.

Paul, a national press photographer and a Conservative councillor for Worth Valley, said the idea to form the band came when he was chatting to bandmate and guitarist Dave Fortune about their musical influences.

The pair found they shared a passion for Pink Floyd which includes classic rock albums such as Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, The Wall, Meddle and most recently The Division Bell.

Paul said: "It all started really because we were talking and I said if there was any band that I would have liked to be in it would have been Pink Floyd.

"We're both massive fans and I've loved their music for days. We decided to get a band together to play Floyd tunes and it has just mushroomed from there. We got the rest of the band from free ads in the papers and cards on notice boards. And now we're getting ready to play at a big venue like Pennington's. It's really exciting."

The councillor, who plays bass like one of Floyd's founder members Roger Waters, said Off The Wall would not be dressing up Stars In Their Eyes-style as the Floyd tribute band.

He said: "We're not a tribute band, we won't be dressing up like Bjorn Again or the Bootleg Beatles do. I think that with Pink Floyd most people actually go to listen to the music - which we will be doing!"

But Paul admits that trying to recreate Pink Floyd's show, which includes hundreds of moving lights and giant inflatable pigs, has been one of the biggest challenges.

He said: "I love the idea of playing on the big stage and the big lights. We could never really reproduce the scale of what Floyd do but we've got a pretty impressive show of our own. We've bought our own lighting rig and a ten metre screen to project images onto at the back so it looks pretty fantastic when it's all up and running."

After tonight's debut show the band is planning to tour Ireland before deciding on its next step to rock stardom.