Watch as West Sussex choir surprises shoppers and bursts into song in supermarket

Anyone who was in Morrisons, in Newland Street, was also treated to a surprise musical performance, courtesy of the Buskerteers Choir.

As part of its fundraising for Comic Relief, the Worthing-based community choir organised a flash mob performance in the store, which started at 8pm. You can still donate to the group’s fundraising via its JustGiving page. A flash mob is a group of people that assembles suddenly in a public place, performs for a brief time, then quickly disperses.

Choir leader Katherine Stewart explained the set-up of the performance, and said: “I set up to ‘busk’ and the choir joined me for the song 'Jump', our upcoming Comic Relief Single. We then sang a few more songs and raised lots of cash for Comic Relief from the generous shoppers. Morrisons loved it and invited us back later in the year.”

The group did a second flash mob performance at Shelter Hall in Brighton on Saturday.

The Buskerteers Choir was set up in Essex in 2019 by Andrew Small, with the aim of raising £1million for charitable causes through choir performances. The organisation now has 28 choirs, including four in Sussex run by Katherine.

Katherine runs choirs in Haywards Heath, Crawley, Brighton and Hove and Worthing, which meets on Wednesday evenings at Queen Street Church in Queen Street. I visited the choir earlier in the year and heard from members about how much it means to them.

The Worthing choir launched a year ago and currently has 47 members. They perform three times a year, at the end of each term, in venues ranging from supermarkets to the Royal Pavilion. So far, the Buskerteers choirs across the UK have raised almost £200,000, with organisations such as Care for Veterans, the British Heart Foundation and Breast Cancer Now benefitting.

Anyone can book a free taster at any of the choirs at any time in the term. Just go to https://www.buskerteerschoir.com/book-a-free-trial-session.