SPOOF MUSIC VIDEOS ARE AN INTERNET HIT... RAISING THOUSANDS FOR THE NHS:
A FORMER soldier and his best friend have raised more than £7,000 for the NHS by making spoof lockdown music videos.
Holyhead pals Garry Stewart and Carl Hagan have taken social media by storm with their send-ups of Miley Cyrus, Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson, Ken Dodd and rising British musician Tom Grennan.
They’ve even had a message of support from Grennan who took time out from preparing for his European tour to Zoom-call the two friends and sing them a song.
Aircraft engineer Carl, 45, and ex-soldier Garry, 31, made the videos on their mobile phones during lockdown.
Donations have flooded in for the pair who are raising cash for Awyr Las – Blue Sky – the NHS charity for the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board which covers all of North Wales.
Garry, a lorry driver who served with the Army in Afghanistan, said making the videos also helping him deal with PTSD.
He was with the Royal Logistics Corps and his job was to drive a giant Oshkosh transporter carrying 62.5-ton Challenger battle tanks up to the front line and recovering vehicles from the soft sands of the Afghan desert.
He said: “Those trucks are made to survive anything which was why they were used to recover other vehicles and we did about 40 operations.
“The IEDs are scary and our comrades in the infantry lost 60 men in six months in 2009 on Operation Herrick 10, one of the bloodiest tours.
“I had worked as an HGV driver after leaving the army but I had a breakdown and my head was messed up. I nearly became homeless but the Army has helped me and so has doing the videos.”
The father-of-four, who has now retrained as a tiler, added: “Carl started it when he posted a video as Michael Jackson and I just thought he was losing it but I knew him from playing football when he used to referee so I texted him suggesting we do some more.
“I really can’t believe the response we’ve had from people and how generous they’ve been – we just really wanted to help people and to be honest it’s helped me too.
“I have been suffering from PTSD since serving in Afghanistan and it still affects me and although I still have therapy it’s now over the phone because of social distancing which makes things more difficult.
“But thanks to doing the videos I’m cheering myself up and we’re helping raise money for NHS Charities.”
Carl, an aircraft mechanic supervisor at RAF Valley where he has worked for 18 years, is also a Football Association of Wales referee. He was inspired by seeing Joe Wicks fitness videos on the internet and he added: “Joe Wicks did Fancy Dress Friday and it just gave me an idea so I dressed up as Batman and did a funny video.
“It seemed to get plenty of attention locally and Garry gave me a call and suggested we started doing them for charity and it’s just taken off from there and two weeks later we’ve raised over £6,500.”
The dad-of-two added: “I live on my own and do all my videos in the living room and because of lockdown I hadn’t even seen Garry until we met up for the picture at Newry Beach in Holyhead. Everyone seems to love them – we’ve even had a call from Tom Grennan who said the videos were a great tonic in these dark times. I was really taken aback.
The videos have had over 300,000 views on Facebook with Carl shooting his own at home in his living room while Garry has partner Rosie Hargreaves behind the lens.