Redding Tesco staff recreate Wham’s Last Christmas video to raise funds for Maggie’s

The video, which was shared online earlier this week, sees staff from the store recreate the popular ‘80s Christmas video.

As singing in stores is prohibited due to COVID restrictions, the colleagues used sign language as a special nod to Strictly Come Dancing’s champion, Rose Ayling-Ellis, who was the first deaf contestant in the show's history.

Masterminded by one of the managers, Anne Anderson, 128 colleagues took part in the amazing festive film.

Murray Leslie, manager at the store, said: “Anne has made a few videos over the years to help boost morale and to raise awareness for worthy causes.

“She wanted to raise money for Maggie’s as a colleague’s husband has recently beaten cancer, and she decided to use sign language as we’ve all been following Strictly and we were all rooting for Rose Ayling-Ellis to win.

"Anne chose Wham’s Last Christmas as last year we didn’t get to make a video so she thought it would be very fitting."

As the store is on two levels with the cafe on the first, Murray said that the stores video syncs up with Wham’s original.

"At the start of Wham’s video you see George Michael driving up to a ski lodge with his friends waving at him from up above on a balcony.

"We recreated this with some of our mobility scooters with staff waving from the cafe’s balcony – it was great fun!

"We all like to have a bit of fun in store, and it’s great for morale – especially with everything that is going on right now.”

Murray said that without Anne, the creation of the video would never have been possible.

"Anne is definitely the star of the show here at Tesco Redding. She is such a wonderful person and a great manager.”He added: "Without her as the driving force behind the video we would never have been able to do it – we would be lost without her.”

If you would like to help the store raise funds, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/donate/2627457007397821/

Thank you for reading this article on our free-to-read website. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by Coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

Please consider purchasing a subscription to our print newspaper to help fund our trusted, fact-checked journalism.