Guns N’ Roses had an embarrassing moment on February 14 when their guitar technician McBob exclaimed “Hello Sydney!” to a Melbourne crowd. Slash has since apologised for the band’s “Spinal Tap intro” – but what about when moments from the cult music mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap actually entered real life? Here’s 9 times life imitated the film’s art.

1. The band getting lost backstage

Many a band can sympathise with this. Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus told NME: “We’ve got lost around venues trying in vain for ten minutes to find the stage. Several times.” Belle & Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch tells a similar story: “I have a cordless microphone and during the song ‘If You Find Yourself Caught In Love’ – we used to play it all the time – there was a instrumental passage and I would disappear off the stage with my microphone. The idea was that I would pop back somewhere in the auditorium. Like we were playing Sydney Opera House, I would run in the back steps and suddenly at the end of the instrumental they would put a spotlight on me and I would be on the third balcony, or something, and fans would be like ‘oh you’re standing right there’. But I went the wrong way and I ended up in a shopping centre.”