Mearns Castle pupil joins Celtic boss Neil Lennon in Christmas advert

The 12-year-old was one of 16 students from the Glasgow-based UKTheatreSchool who successfully auditioned to become part of the children’s choir featuring on the club’s newly-released charity single – a reworded version of the festive song “We Three Kings”.

Violet who is in her first-year at Mearns Castle High School has been a student at the UKTS for six years was kitted out in a Celtic strip as she and her fellow students sang under the direction of ‘choirmaster’, the team manager Neil Lennon.

The student group spent the day at Glasgow’s Mitchell Theatre filming their part in the video which is part of Celtic’s annual fundraising initiative this year which will help local families who are facing poverty at Christmas.

The Appeal will also support a number of initiatives working with refugee families who have come to Scotland, as well as assisting groups including Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity and Spirit Aid.

Violet described her Celtic video filming day as ‘really exciting’ and added: “I really enjoyed the whole experience and would love to do it all over again.”

Earlier this year Violet was named as one of the UKTheatreSchool’s Student of the Year award winners thanks to talent and hard work. Dad David said, “UKTS has become an integral and increasingly important part of Violet’s life. She has become more confident and absolutely loves performing. Violet has appeared in several adverts during her time at UKTS and she had a fantastic day filming the Celtic Christmas advert”.

UKTheatreSchool, based in Glasgow’s West Regent Street, has more than 700 children enroled in evening and weekend classes focused on the performing arts. The school has its own in-house casting agency which co-ordinated the students’ involvement in Celtic’s charity advert project.

Over the years students have worked alongside other big name stars such as David Walliams, Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth, Rihanna, James McAvoy, Peter Mullan, Angelina Jolie and Halle Berry in a series of TV shows, movies and big-brand adverts.

UKTS principal Lizanne Lambie Thomson said: “For Violet and our other students this was a great opportunity to be involved and see how a major full-scale music advert is produced. This invaluable experience helps them prepare if they want to pursue a career in the performing arts in the future.”

“This past year has been one of our busiest ever for our castings agency and already there are students signed up for some big productions which will be hitting the screens in 2020.