Wigan wedding business goes bust letting down hundreds of couples on their big day

It is claimed Jamie Reeves, a performer who ran a company called "The Best Singing Waiters", has taken money from 800 couples nationwide, who each paid between £1,600 to £1,800 for the singers.

The service - with Mr Reeves as "head waiter" - provided surprise singing waiters for corporate events, weddings and private parties.

The business has now gone bust with liabilities of well over £500,000, and little or no prospect of creditors getting any of their money back.

But Mr Reeves, a dad-of-three, has already set himself up in a new role and is trading under a new company name. It is feared he will leave behind a similar trail of disappointed customers.

According to one former employee, who asked not to be named, Mr Reeves also owes huge sums to HMRC.

She said: "I have collected lots of evidence from people and don’t want any more innocent people to have their money stolen.

"I want to make sure he has stopped trading and not just carrying on doing the same over again."

It is believed Mr Reeves's victims have reported him to police and Action Fraud but it is not known whether he is being investigated.

The winding-up of The Best Singing Waiters is now in the hands of the Official Receiver, who is responsible for realising any assets and distributing any funds to creditors. He is also responsible for investigating the cause of the company's failure.

The Receiver’s report to creditors, which has been seen by Wigan Today, names Mr Reeves's wife Claire as sole director. It states that parent company Solfan1 has total liabilities of £632,177, but zero assets.

The Receiver indicates "there is not a prospect of money being returned to creditors," particularly as the debt to HMRC takes priority over those of ordinary creditors.

The report adds that Mr Reeves "attributes the insolvency of the company to the Covid pandemic, not being able to catch up post-pandemic, and needing extra time to pay debts."

Mr Reeves, meanwhile, has now reinvented himself as a business coach. In a two-and-half minute video posted on his LinkedIn page, a bespectacled Mr Reeves - styling himself “Dr Biz” and wearing a white coat and stethoscope - boasts that his Singing Waiters business made "over seven figures".

However he goes on to say that he has now "retired from singing" and is concentrating on helping overworked business owners to switch off and spend quality time with their loved ones. He quotes a figure of £3,600 for 90 days’ work (split over three monthly payments), or alternatively £3,000 if paid upfront.

Wigan Today has approached Mr Reeves but he refused to comment.

In November 2021, he was featured in a story describing how he wrote and recorded an album over Zoom to keep him occupied during the Covid pandemic.

He said: “I needed to do something to keep me occupied when the wedding industry was all but closed down. Doing the online sessions gave me something to look forward to and a sense of purpose.

“It was also nice to get a few things off my chest, self therapy at its best.”