The song also uses audio from an interview the Prime Minister gave to Good Housekeeping magazine April, in which he said of one pensioner: âShe told me that she doesnât get out of bed till midday because she doesnât want to turn the heating on.â
Middleton, who was raised by his grandparents for a number of years, says he has seen first-hand how damaging Labourâs controversial policy has been. âOlder people do feel the cold more,â he says. âMy gran had a heart attack and her medication makes her blood vessels constrict so she is always freezing. Even in summer sheâs bundled up by the fire. After 14 years of the Tories we were all fed up, and we thought things would be different under Labour, but itâs way worse than anyone thought.â
(Sung to the tune of âitâll be Lonely This Christmasâ by a band called Mud from the 70âs).
I never set out to get to Christmas number one â that wasnât my plan at all,â says Chris Middleton, 33, a freelance writer from Newcastle who wrote the lyrics for the track. âI saw something on Twitter a couple of months ago about trying to do a Christmas song for pensioners and the hook of the chorus just came to me. Lonely This Christmas is my favourite Christmas song so thatâs probably why.
The initial target was to raise ÂŁ5,000 with the song via a JustGiving page â âwhich I never thought weâd getâ â but it has now exceeded ÂŁ24,000, with donations still coming. It will all be donated to Age UK. âItâs just coming in from all over the place now,â he says. âI canât keep track of it.â Middleton says any revenue he gets from streams and downloads will be distributed among smaller charities which help the elderly.
