Viral campaign reunites Polish builder with Christmas pay

A BUILDER has been reunited with his £600 pay packet which he left behind in pub on a Christmas night out after a celebrity-backed social media campaign went viral.

Thousands of Twitter users, including J K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter novels and TV star Alan Carr, shared a post online by the Alexandra pub in Wimbledon, south London, after the owners found the wage packet in the bar on Dec 21.

Mick Dore and his wife Sarah, managers of the pub, felt the quickest way to track down the worker they knew only as “Mariusz” was to put out the appeal on social media. The only clue to his identity was his name, written on the envelope, and CCTV footage.

The post from Dec 22, read: “Somebody lost their Crimbo wage packet last night. We found it, and we’ve got it. Let us know the name on the front, how much, and which bar it was in, and it’s yours. Please RT so we can get this fella his Christmas wages back.”

Within hours it had spread worldwide. Over six days it was shared on Facebook more than 1.5million times, and by more than three million on Twitter.

Eventually construction worker “Mariusz” was found only when the viral post was spotted by his son in Poland and he told his father, who had returned there for Christmas.

Yesterday Mariusz, who didn’t give his surname, returned to the watering hole for his earnings. He also reportedly left a generous tip for Andrew Radcliffe, the barman who found the pay packet under a chair.