MUSIC success stories from Sutton Benger hit a new high on Christmas Day as former Hardenhuish pupil Katie Evans helped the Lewisham NHS Choir beat Justin Bieber to the Christmas number one.

Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir’s A Bridge Over You, a rework of Fix You by Coldplay and Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel, went straight to Number One in its first week in the Official Singles Chart Top 40.

Dr Evans, 32, said: “It was amazing. It was completely unbelievable. It’s very difficult to put into words, such surprise and delight that the country has got behind the NHS.

“It’s such a diverse range of people who work in the NHS.

“We enjoy singing the song but it’s quite emotional because we are trying to fix people at work but the tune is lovely to sing.”

The former Hardenhuish School head girl has been with the choir for almost two years, and was at home, gathered around the radio with 17 members of her family, on Christmas Day to hear the announcement.

“We were all sitting down listening on the radio and they really dragged it out. Then we went bananas,” said her father, Tony Evans.

“It was like a football crowd, there was lots of excitement. We were delighted, the fact that a choir of doctors and nurses can get to number one on Christmas Day is quite an achievement.”

Dr Evans grew up in Sutton Benger with her younger sisters Jenny and Sarah, attending the village primary school before moving to Hardenhuish, Chippenham.

She started singing in the choir at St Michael’s Church, Lyneham, before joining her college choir while studying medicine at Cambridge.

After graduating, she moved to Lewisham, where she joined the choir set up by Gareth Malone for his TV show, Sing While You Work, and is now based at St Thomas’ Hospital in the capital.

She and her husband Sat (c) expect their first baby in the spring.

The single, raising money for Carers UK and Mind, outsold Love Yourself by Justin Bieber by 31,000 copies.

Three years ago another Sutton Benger singer, Gabrielle Aplin, topped the charts with The Power of Love, as used in the John Lewis Christmas advert of 2012.

She had her first UK number on December 9 but slipped to number nine in the Christmas chart topped by The Justice Collective’s Hillsborough tribute.