Let’s get this straight, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: It’s not just Jimmy Sweets. It’s The Jimmy Sweets. And — please have patience, ladies and gentlemen — they will be out on stage shortly. Please, control yourself.

Back! Get back! Please, get back. Hey you — paparazzi guys — quit pushing. Omigawd! Quit pushing!

SECURITY!!!! MEDICS!!!!

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The Facebook site “The Jimmy Sweets” perpetuates the semi-gag performances at the Westman Winter Festival last weekend by this singing group from Brandon about which a press release was issued last week saying “Brandon family musical performance group rises from obscurity to stardom over a 35-year time span.”

Followers on the Facebook site ask faux-serious questions about paparazzi, security, autographs and tours and the hype machine is in full swing — except it’s all for fun.

Fun and family, says Jim McCrae, the Brandon real estate agent, current city councillor and former Manitoba cabinet minister who has five girls — six, counting his wife Darlene — who were part of the entertainment package at the English Pavilion at last weekend’s festival.

The Jimmy Sweets warmed up the crowd for The Beetles, the Brandon band fronted by Moe Karrouze that plays amazing covers of all your Beatles favourites. McCrae and his singing girls — Toby (Sweet Bonkers), Nancy (Sweet Bones), Hollie (Sweet Balls), Candice (Sweet Bugs) and Tara (Sweet Boomer) — comprise The Jimmy Sweets and four of them joined Jim, who sang in a Brandon rock group called The Children of Stone more than 40 years ago when he was 17, to run through their 13-song repertoire twice nightly. Sweet Bonkers, a creative communications genius, is the brains behind the Facebook promotion of The Jimmy Sweets and handles all the press releases from her home in Indiana, but she wasn’t able to be on stage with her siblings.

“As a family, we’ve always had some kind of production going,” said McCrae. “We’re always had more fun together than should be allowed.”

The girls and their singing have been recorded for family posterity since they were toddlers, hence the “obscurity to stardom over a 35-year time span” in the headline of their press release.

“We’re just rekindling stuff that was aglow,” said McCrae last Wednesday. “I love to hear my daughters sing. I think people will be fairly impressed with what we’ll present.”

The Jimmy Sweets’ repertoire ranged from 60s music by the Kinks (You Really Got Me and All Day and All of the Night) to the Spice Girls (“we do a pretty bangup job of Spice Up Your Life”), said McCrae.

While McCrae and his daughters have sung at a nursing home or two, and at church, weddings and parties, last weekend’s efforts at the English Pavilion were their first true public performances.

“It’s about fun,” said McCrae. “We sing a few songs. But don’t take us too seriously. We sing 13 songs and have a few antics on stage.”

The press release accentuates the “fun” aspect of The Jimmy Sweets. “Fans have been identified — through Facebook — across Canada and the U.S., in New Zealand, Germany, Korea, Thailand, Hamiota . . . ”

‘The family that plays together stays together’ certainly defines the McCraes, whose matriarch, Jim’s wife, Darlene, “has been behind the group from Day 1,” said Jim.

You may have seen her last weekend. She might have been the one sitting in the corner at the ANAF hall, dealing with the agents, contracts spread out, cell phone constantly ringing.