Helston’s Portas Pilot video has made headlines in Scotland after Mary Portas herself singled it out for praise.

An article on www.heraldscotland.com, the online version of The Herald and Sunday Herald, devotes its first five paragraphs to references to the Helston video, after the ‘Queen of Shops’ Portas starts singing along to it during an interview.

During a conversation about the Portas Pilot project – a competition offering 24 towns in the UK up to £100,000 of government funding, in addition to Portas’s only expert help, to boost flagging economies – she refers to Helston’s ‘Towneoke’ video.

Made as part of Helston’s application to the project, it shows traders, residents and organisations of the town singing along to boyband Five’s 1999 pop hit Keep on Movin’.

In the article in The Herald Portas is quoted as asking business partner Peter Cross: “What’s the one when they sing?”

After some frantic searching on YouTube, via his phone, the video is found and Portas starts singing along.

She later says of the video, and others showing similar community spirit: “Those videos will make your heart leap. There's a sense of, ‘This is my country and this is how bad this has got.’ It's just the most phenomenal thing.”

Helston’s video currently has 9,677 views and 163 ‘likes’. Town centre manager Jonathan Birkett, who dreamed up the video and put it together in only a week, has promised to release a second edit, with the actual singing, if the viewing figure reaches 10,000.

  • Links to The Herald article and the Helston Towneoke video can be found in the 'related links' box below right.