Alistair Griffin - Hallelujah Mark Viduka

Hallelujah Mark Viduka

Griffin is notorious for performing his own comedy versions of well known songs in his live concerts. These have included songs by George Formby, Wham, Johnny Mathis, Ronan Keating and Robin Gibb.

In February 2007, Griffin sang at a charity event at the Riverside Stadium, home of Middlesbrough Football Club. After his performance of Leonard Cohen’s "Hallelujah", he asked the audience if they would like to hear an alternative version, based on Cohen’s song, but with new words dedicated to the Boro hero at that time, Australian striker Mark Viduka. Keeping faithfully to Cohen's melody, Griffin's almost plaintive vocals are sung to a simple acoustic backing, forming a contrast to the altered lyrics which reference the particular skills of Viduka and several other popular players in the team, as well as some of their opponents, in a sharply observed and witty commentary.

After hearing the tongue-in-cheek tribute, Middlesbrough manager Gareth Southgate was so taken with it he asked Griffin to make a special recording to play at the following day’s match. It was played to the crowd at half-time and to the players in the dressing room after the game.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Boro’s Aussie international keeper Mark Schwarzer said:

“It’s a great song. He (Mark Viduka) is already copping some stick about it and I’m going to make sure he gets some more from the Australia camp — I’m going to make sure they get to hear it as well. We played it in the dressing room afterwards and were a bit unsure about it to begin with but the chorus is pretty good. We all sang and I think Mark was a little bit embarrassed by it but I think he enjoyed it”

The incident received global press coverage, most of it positive (although The Times was uncomplimentary and dubbed Leonard Cohen "the cheesiest of crooners"). It was immediately picked up by hundreds of online sports pages and blogs. The Mark Viduka song was added to Griffin’s MySpace page the following day and clocked up over 75,000 plays by football fans worldwide. .

The BBC Sports Review described the song as the "football anthem of the week, year, decade and possibly all time", and the Irish Times called it "a bit on the excellent side". TV and Radio coverage followed. A film of Griffin performing the song with other young Middlesbrough supporters appeared on Sky Sports News, and he also appeared on the BBC's and ITV's regional news programmes. In addition to interviews on local radio stations, Griffin was also interviewed on BBC Radio Five Live The song was also broadcast on several channels in Australia and on the BBC World Service.

Southgate embraced the tune as a way of raising money for his chosen charity, Macmillan Cancer Support. Leonard Cohen was approached and gave permission for the song to be released as a charity download