John Altman is releasing a Christmas single.
The ‘EastEnders’ actor – who is best known as the soap’s Nasty Nick Cotton – has teamed up with JOANovARC to record a new version of Iggy Pop’s ‘Real Wild Child (Wild One)’ and is hoping to top the festive chart ahead of Band Aid 30 and ‘The X Factor’ winner.
He said: "I’ve always wanted to release a record, that is one of the things on my wish list.
"It’d be something else [to reach number one ahead of Band Aid]. You can’t tell can you? But we’re going all out for it because I think we’ve got a good one there. It was a pleasure to do it.
"We are going all out to beat ‘X Factor’ too. We’ve got a great team on board. The rest of it is up to everyone out there."
The 62-year-old star has tweaked the well-known song to make it more festive, though he insists it is still "hard-hitting".
He said: "We decided on the Iggy Pop song and I rewrote one of the verses and we rearranged it a little bit, put a few Christmassy jingle jangle bits in there, but we wanted it to be fairly hard-hitting as well."
And if the single – which is released on November 30 on Right Track Records/Universal – does well in the chart, John has plans to record an album.
He told BANG Showbiz: "I would love to do a whole album with the girls. I’ve got the material I’ve written which would fit. They would be able to play it really, really well. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Let’s see how the single goes."
For more information visit www.joanovarc.co.uk and the single can be pre-ordered from Apple iTunes.
John Altman releasing Christmas single
