Newbury duo release Christmas single
Song was originally written for a radio station competition
A NEWBURY duo have released a Christmas single, with all proceeds being gifted to charity.
The band Juliette – made up of Nick Strong and Stephen Millyard – have released The Big Red Guy on Spotify, iTunes and Amazon Music.
Juliette are a covers duo, but the Christmas song is their first original single.
All of the money made from the sale of the single will go to Friends of PICU in Southampton.
The charity supports children and their families by providing vital equipment and services that are not always provided by the statutory authorities at the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at Southampton University Hospital.
Mr Strong said: “We started really just by doing local gigs then I had this Christmas song for a couple of years, but never really did anything with it.
“Every year we said ‘we will put it out this year’, but this year we said we’ll go for it with this charity in mind.
“We had got a good response and have a video on YouTube as well and that’s going quite well.”
Mr Strong said there was a personal reason for supporting the charity.
He said: “A friend of mine’s son was cared for there when he was born.
“He’s fine now, but we did a big push a couple of years ago to raise money.
“They were raising money for an ambulance at the time and raised about £70,000.
“We supported them as we did their big charity ball.”
Mr Strong said that the song had started as a competition for Newbury Sound radio station, which asked listeners to write a song for Christmas.
He said The Big Red Guy was written in about 10 minutes and was “just a fun song with just as many Christmas lyrics as possible”.
And the pair have celebrity endorsement as Mr Millyard’s father, Allen Millyard, builds motorcycles and helps restore items on Channel 4s Find It, Fix It, Flog It.
Mr Strong said that Mr Millyard and presenter Henry Cole had offered to help promote the song.
The Big Red Guy was recorded by Sam Winfield and engineered by Tom Millar at Studio 91 and it features local singer songwriter Joe Hicks on guitar.
The album can be downloaded on Spotify here.
