Nostalgic fun celebrating school Christmas assemblies

From the best Christmas songs of our youth to classic primary school bangers, he is promising the perfect festive night out for the whole family.

It all began as a few playful posts on social media with James performing iconic school songs to entertain his students but soon developed into something a whole lot bigger. The videos took on a life of their own, tapping into nostalgic hearts across the nation. Primary School Assembly Bangers was born from these videos and since early 2023 James has taken his live version of the school assembly all across the UK, with multiple sets at this year’s Glastonbury Festival going instantly viral. Now comes a festive twist with The Big Christmas Assembly tour.

“It just started off with a series of videos I made during the dark days of lockdown when I was talking to people online. I put up these videos of my favourite songs from school and I came up with the idea of doing singalong events. I did a one-off event for family and friends and I posted a few clips and I got an amazing response. People were saying that they wanted to see the show so I rewrote it as a theatre show basically going through the school year and talking about my childhood but interspersed with group sing-alongs. And it's amazing how the group sing-alongs bring joy.

“I always say at the beginning that you might not know each other at the start of the evening but by the end you will be the wherever-you-are choir. When I started to think about the show I contacted various venues about the idea of a nostalgic show about school assemblies and I suspect a lot of them pressed delete straight away. It is a bit of a niche concept, I understand but people just really enjoy coming together and it really has been the most joyous thing.”

James concedes that there will be plenty of people who spent most school assemblies mucking around but he believes that there is possibly something even therapeutic about the show for many of us now, a chance to work through some of the feelings about those past assemblies: “I think it is the community aspect. But I do think assemblies were quite a formative experience for a lot of people and this is escapism. It's trying to bring the joy out especially as it is an assembly for adults. I also dive into a bit of 90s nostalgia. I worked with the show road-testing it and it had a great response and so I have developed it and set up something a bit different as a Christmas version.

“I’ve always loved how the songs we sang as children at Christmas time brought so much joy and excitement. The Big Christmas Assembly is a celebration of those songs and the fun we had, whether it was singing in assemblies or practising for the Christmas nativity.”

James’s musical journey has taken him from school classrooms to some of the biggest stages in the UK, including performing with Gareth Malone’s Voices at the Royal Variety Show and providing vocals for major artists like Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones and Electric Light Orchestra. James has since appeared on BBC Breakfast, The One Show, CBBC Newsround and BBC Scotland with additional features on ITV This Morning, BBC Radio 2 with Jeremy Vine, Scott Mills and Tom Allen’s Virgin Radio show.