St Winifred's School Choir are getting the band back together!

By Patrick McLennan
( What's on TV )
published

The massed ranks of St Winifred's School Choir are getting back together on TV for the first time in decades to see if there is still no one quite like grandma.

The angelic young singers from Stockport rose to fame - and the top of the charts - in Christmas 1980 when they knocked former Beatle John Lennon off number one spot with their sickly sweet tune.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsXJcIODLtQ

 

There's No-One Quite Like Grandma spent a week at number one having knocked Lennon's song Happy Christmas (War is Over) off top spot, before being replaced by another Lennon tune Imagine in the wake of the murder of the ex-Beatle.

The choir, now aged in their 40s, will appear on a Channel 4 show with a working title Rewind It's Christmas.

Among the original members was Sally Lindsay who starred in Coronation Street as barmaid Shelley Unwin before helping create hit cop show Scott and Bailey.

Fourteen members of the choir reunited five years ago to record a new version of the song for charity.

The show also includes a performance by glam-rockers Slade and The Darkness and an interview with The Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan and the family of Kirsty MacColl about the inspiration behind The Fairytale Of New York.

 

Patrick McLennan
Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.