Hackney hospice patient Lillian John, 94, aims for Christmas Number One

Lillian John (left) recording the track at Abbey Road. Photograph: St Joseph’s Hospice

The Hackney Citizen will be cheering on Lillian John, 94, a nonagenarian patient at St Joseph’s Hospice, next month and wishing her the best of festive luck in her quest to to reach Christmas Number 1 with a cover of “The Living Years”. The only question is, how she will celebrate if she succeeds beyond her wildest dreams and makes it to the top slot?

“I don’t drink,” she said, “and I’ve given up smoking after 75 years. I’m a good girl now.”

Lillian, a grandmother, great grandmother and great great grandmother, recorded the track with the multigenerational London Hospices Choir and says singing has given her a new lease of life.

She belted out the tune along with 300 others wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “St Joseph’s Hospice” in multicoloured letters during a recording session at Abbey Road Studios, the place closely associated with The Beatles which has become a site of pilgrimage for music lovers.

Afterwards she told the Hackney Citizen the song had “lovely words” about making amends and telling loved ones how you felt before it’s too late, adding: “I hope people take heed of the message.”

She said: “It’s not worthwhile wasting your time on this Earth with grudges or petty arguments. All of a sudden the people you love are gone and you say: ‘Oh, I’m ever so sorry I left them with bad words.’

“I’ve heard it over and over: ‘I wish I’d have gone to visit’ or ‘I wish I’d’ve done this’ or ‘I shouldn’t’ve done that.’ When I heard the words in this song, I thought, how true that is.”

She added: “It’s a waste of time to be angry. Enjoy life. When you come into a hospice, some people say ‘I’m here because I’m dying.’ Well, we’re all dying when we start living.

“When we’re born we start to die. So I say, don’t start feeling sorry for yourself, and make the most of what you’ve got – and be happy. That comes with old age and wisdom – if I’ve got any.

“The thing I always say to my family is, let’s make memories, and nice ones, so that you can look back and laugh and say: ‘Do you remember when…?’  

The single, which is yet to go on sale, was recorded with Paul Carrack, who was the lead for the vocalist for the original 1991 hit. It can currently be preordered from Amazon and iTunes.

The choir included patients from 18 different London hospices as well as staff and volunteers from St Joseph’s.

They also shot a moving music video under the direction of top Hollywood film director Annabel Jankel, and will now take on the might of X Factor to try and secure the coveted top slot in the festive top 10.

The Mare Street hospice, which was founded in 1900, relies heavily on charitable donations.

Profits from the sale of the single will be divided between all hospices involved to help them support those reaching the end of their lives and patients’ families.

Lillian said she hopes the tune will be a big hit.

She said: “My daughter says: ‘You’ll go viral.’ What’s that meant to mean? It sounds like something I used to take as a kid.”

Asked how she will feel if she becomes an internet sensation, she speculated about having to hide from the paparazzi, saying: “I’ll have to hide my face when I go out. If ever a woman suffered!”

Born in East Ham in 1922,. Lillian’s mother was a machinist and her father fixed fittings inside lifts in hotels.

She experienced some of the worst nights of the the Blitz in the East End while working for the war effort near the docks, was married for 61 years and had three children.

She said her earliest memory is of getting lost as a child with her sister on the streets of East London.

“We followed the Salvation Army band,” she reminisced. “I don’t know where we ended up, but I knew my address, and when I realised we were lost, I found a policeman and he got us back.

“I don’t know where we’d walked to but we just followed the band and the big man with the drums, and there was us two little kids skipping along on the pavement.

“This was what the Salvation Army used to do in East Ham – they used to stop at the corner and play a couple of hymns.

“I can remember getting lost, and they [the band] went into a shed. I thought it was a shed, but I suppose it was a church of whatever, and I suddenly stopped and I thought, where are we?

“My sister was younger than me, and I thought, I don’t know what to do. Imagine – two little girls. I wasn’t even in school yet.

“I found a policeman and I said: ‘We’re lost.’ And he said: ‘Do you know where you live?’ and I told him.

“He said: ‘Oh well, you know that much.’ He took us back to the police station and we had a cup of cocoa and a piece of cake. My sister still remembers it to this day.”

This article was updated at 4.13pm on 22 November.