Music

War veteran, 90, hopes to knock Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber off Official Charts


90-year-old D-Day veteran hopes to knock Justin Bieber from top of UK singles chart (Picture:  PA/Getty)

This 90-year-old Second World War veteran hopes to knock out Justin Bieber from the top of UK singles chart.

A campaign has been launched to get Jim Radford’s single to number one after the unlikely success his song.

The D-Day fighter’s chilling ballad, The Shores Of Normandy, is inspired by his memories of comrades who ‘stormed the gates of hell’ on 6 June 1944.

Two weeks after its release, the folk song briefly stormed ahead of Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber’s collaboration I Don’t Care on Amazon music chart.

Mr Radford, who is donating the profits towards a sculpture honouring those who ‘died upon that blood-soaked sand’, said reaching the top spot was beyond his ‘wildest dreams’.

As of today, Ed and JB’s track sits at number one in the Official Charts for the third week.

Although he has now been thrust into the limelight, Mr Radford does not seem to care much about the glitz and the glamour.

Mr Jim Radford single hopes to top the charts (Picture:  Rex Features)
D-Day veteran Jim Radford pictured on board HMS Belfast (Picture: Unknown)

‘I don’t follow pop music much,’ said Mr Radford, who was born in Hull and now lives in Lewisham, southeast London.

‘These stars like this Bieber, I’m not sure I’d recognise his songs. He probably doesn’t listen to me.’

Money raised by the single will go towards a memorial to the 22,442 men and women under British command who passed away during the Allied landings and the Battle of Normandy.

Ed and Justin are a dream team (Picture: Instagram/Backgrid)

He hopes to hit number one on the official UK singles chart on the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

Mr Radford is now backed by the likes of BBC presenter Jeremy Vine, Nationwide Bank and The Normandy Memorial Trust.

The singer wrote the song after a moving return to Arromanches-les-Baines in Normandy in 1969.

After performing it for decades, including a memorable Royal Albert Hall show in 2014, the father-of-three recorded a new version to raise funds for a memorial in Ver-sur-Mer.



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