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NHS Staff from south east London are making a bid for the prestigious festive top spot.
Dr Harriet Nerva, from Queen’s Park London, started promoting the song with the campaign #NHS4XmasNo1 through Facebook and Twitter in October.
The song is performed by Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir, a group that includes nurses, physiotherapists, porters, doctors and administrators. They are performing a mash-up of ‘Bridge over troubled water’ and ‘Fix you’ by Coldplay.
The competition
As well as the likes of Justin Beiber and Adele the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir must battle NHS colleagues the National Health Singers who are also in the running.
The rival choir is formed of junior doctors from across the country. Their tune ‘Yours’ currently sits at number 90 in the iTunes download chart. But Dr Nerva, who works at Hinchingbrooke Hospital, is not worried about the competition.
“I’m really happy that we’ve got this kind of creativity in the NHS and it’s great that we’re getting this exposure. Their song’s message is fantastic, the lyrics very much focus on not overworking junior doctors.” she said.
She added: “The junior doctor contract does go to the heart of the NHS. You’d be quite hard pressed to find a junior doctor who doesn’t have quite low moral at the moment”
Celebrations
Even if the song does reach number one Dr Nerva said she won’t be celebrating. She is working a night shift in A&E on Christmas Day, but she is excited for what the songs success could do for the NHS staff moral:
“It would be a celebration in itself. To get the song out there to the NHS staff who will need a moral boost while working over the festive period. I will be happy for NHS staff to receive recognition for the really hard work there going to be doing over Christmas, it’s going to be a grueling time.”
Any money made from sales will be split between the charities Carers UK and Mind who support mental health and its research. Explaining the choice of charities Dr Nerva said:
“Carers are our partners in care they’re often unsung heroes who don’t get enough recognition.”
#LoveYourNHS
The campaign ‘Love your NHS’ was started in conjunction with Dr Nerva’s bid to make Lewisham and Greenwich choir number one this Christmas. They are asking people to post selfies to Twitter and Facebook holding a sign that says “I DO”.
Dominoes staff showing their support:
This year the Christmas number one will be revealed on Christmas Day. BBC Radio One will be counting down the festive chart from 10am.
