ISLAMABAD — Muhammad Shahid Nazir is a covenant to a age-old proverb that if we give a male a fish, he will eat for a day, though if we learn a male to sing about fish, his strain will fire adult a British cocktail chart.
The 31-year-old Pakistani fishmonger catapulted to celebrity in new weeks in a unlikeliest of circumstances: while hawking solidified limp and mackerel for one British bruise ($1.61) during Queens Market in London.
Not gentle with cheering about his sell to attract customers, as many vendors do, he came adult with a elementary descant that someone held on video and posted on YouTube progressing this year. It became a viral prodigy and has been noticed over 7 million times.
“One Pound Fish altered my whole life,” pronounced Nazir, who returned to Pakistan on Thursday to a hero’s acquire and has been flooded with requests to perform and do advertisements. “I am so happy now.”
To report a strain as familiar would be a sum understatement. It drills low into your mind and sits like a musical jack-in-the box that goes off each few minutes, causing one to mangle into strain involuntarily to a amusement, or maybe flourishing despair, of those nearby.
“Come on ladies, come on ladies, one bruise fish! Have a, have a look, one bruise fish!” sings Nazir, as he points to his things behind him. “Very, really good, one bruise fish! Very, really cheap, one bruise fish!”
In an epoch in that a Internet seems to show roughly everybody with 15 mins of fame, Nazir’s YouTube video could have been a finish of a story. But Warner Music offering Nazir a understanding to record a techno-infused chronicle of “One Pound Fish,” he said. In a Bollywood-style video, he performs in a snazzy fit alongside scantily-clad dancers to a South Asian-influenced cocktail beat.
The strain video has been noticed scarcely 9 million times given it was posted on YouTube about 3 weeks ago. As a strain gained momentum, people began articulate about it as a critical contender for a legendary No. 1 Christmas singular in a United Kingdom — a strain that tops a draft in a week a holiday falls. Past chart-toppers embody The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.”
In a end, “One Pound Fish” done it to No. 29 on a top-40 chart. It was beaten by another Internet sensation, PSY’s “Gangnam Style,” that clocked in during No. 6. The No. 1 mark was clinched by a chronicle of a Hollies’ “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” by The Justice Collective, a organisation of star musicians who available a gift singular for victims of a bolt during a soccer track in 1989 that killed 96 people.
Nazir really doesn’t perspective blank out on a No. 1 Christmas singular as a setback. He has returned to his home nation to get a visa for France for a recover of his strike strain there and also has skeleton to take “One Pound Fish” to a United States, where he hopes it will make a large splash.
It has been utterly a ride. He grew adult in a little-known city of Pattoki nearby a eastern city of Lahore. His father owned a ride company, though his passion was always music, and he spent his girl singing both eremite songs and cocktail hits by stars like Michael Jackson.
He trafficked to Britain to investigate though eventually got a work assent and started operative as a fishmonger in London 9 months ago, he said. He now wants to pursue a career in music, though a fish case in London will always reason a special place in his heart.
“I can’t forget England, Queens Market, my fish case since that place altered my whole life,” pronounced Nazir.