A young boy from Reddish has gone viral on TikTok after a stranger shared a video of him busking in the city centre. Alfie Shields, 11, wanted to raise money for the children of Ukraine.
So he hit the streets last Saturday, March 19, with a microphone and a sign. He sang his heart out and raised more than £350 for charity. He has since gone viral on the social media app.
The video was shared by the TikTok account @tuckers123 and has so far amassed more than 8.3 million views. The video has also been liked 2.1 million times and shared more than 30,000 times.
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Alfie is really proud of the money he has raised and intends to continue busking to raise even more.
He said: “I feel quite proud of myself, I’m just really proud of myself for what I did. I feel like the children just need help at the moment with what they’re going through and I wanted to do it for them to help them get new stuff like new clothes to help them live.
"I think it's important [to raise money] because it can like help people who need it and it provide funds and stuff that can help them."
Alfie’s uncle, Matthew Rees, said: “He was doing some busking in Manchester, to raise some money for the charity, to help the kids in Ukraine.
To view the TikTok video, follow the link here: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLufTVWy/
“Some lady just recorded it and put it on her TikTok story. I won’t pretend I know too much about TikTok, and then it’s just gone a bit crazy.
“It’s cool, in the world that we live its quite nice. I just stand back in a quiet corner and you see people walk past, realise it’s an 11 year-old boy with one front tooth and they all just stop and smile.
“It’s quite a nice thing to watch, to be perfectly truthful.”
Julie Howlett was the TikTok user who posted the video. She was visiting Manchester with her three-year-old grandson and was "astounded" to hear Alfie's singing.
Julie, from Shoreham-by- Sea, near Brighton, said: "I was walking and I could hear the voice and I thought, ‘oh my God, that voice is brilliant.’ I was expecting someone who was 19 or 20.
"When we got round the corner, I couldn’t believe it when I saw this young lad, especially when I saw the reason he was singing for.
"I thought, ‘I have got to get a quick video of him before we have to rush off.’ Then the next day, I was looking through my photos of my grandson in Manchester and I saw the video again and I thought , ‘he is brilliant, he deserves to go somewhere in life with that voice, I will stick it on TikTok.’
"And I couldn’t believe it when I saw the views he had! It’s gone mad.
"My daughter phoned me and said ‘it’s going mad on TikTok!’
"Even my three-year-old grandson who's hyper, when we went to move on, he said, ‘no, no, no, nanny, I want to listen!'
“Alfie was absolutely fantastic and I really hope somebody takes him up on the talent he’s got and they should do because he is brilliant. I saw someone said on TikTok that he is the next Ed Sheeran without the ginger hair!”
This isn’t the first time Alfie’s singing has been noticed . When Alfie was five, a video of him singing ‘I’ve Put A Spell On You’ dressed in a curly wig and dressing gown was spotted by Bette Midler herself and shared widely.
Rather than donating to a fundraising page, Alfie has asked people to donate directly to Ukraine through the emergency appeal .
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