Baltimore puts on ‘Happy’ face in YouTube hit

If ever there was an example of dancing the blues away, this is it. The West Cork village of Baltimore has gone viral courtesy of a YouTube video showing locals bopping to Happy by Pharrell Williams.

The video was recorded the Sunday after the last big storm which knocked out electricity across much of the south of the country, and was uploaded on February 21.

In the days since it has clocked up more than 9,000 views and has been retweeted around the world.

Filmed by local wedding videographer Colin Hickey, the video was the brainchild of Sheelagh Broderick, an artist and local HSE health promotion officer.

Both admitted that no-one could have expected the level of input from local people on the day of filming — or the reaction online since then.

“We just laughed the whole day,” Sheelagh, who is originally from Cork, said.

“I guess we have had a tough winter and Baltimore is such an amazing place I wanted to provide an opportunity for people to get outside and have fun. The square [in the village] is such a public space and it’s easy for people to congregate.”

Colin, originally from Ballincollig but a four-year resident of Baltimore, said his wife had to persuade him to take on the filming at first.

“I didn’t know anything about this track, and people dancing in Baltimore — at first it sounded a bit silly,” he admits.

“On the day then we had a great day and I knew from the footage it was going to be a great video. We promoted it through Facebook and Sheelagh put up posters around Baltimore — we had no idea who would show up. The week had been so bad I thought people won’t want to come out on a Sunday.”

But they did, in their droves, and even from Skibbereen and Ballydehob. With his camera and ghetto blaster Colin began filming at 10am on February 16 and kept going until 6.30pm, simply playing the music for a few minutes and recording people as they took their turn to dance.

Sheelagh had seen similar videos featuring people in Galway, Belfast and elsewhere, but the diversity of Baltimore and the community spirit shone through, with bucket collections also raising some money for the local RNLI lifeboat station.

Among those bringing their best moves was social care worker Stephen Curran — who can be seen in the snappy red trousers and dickie bow combo — and Petra Riemers, originally from Germany.

Colin Hickey said: “I am lost for words — it’s great for the town and the people and it definitely brought people here together.”