Get the Porty started!

But a new music video showing Edinburgh’s seaside at its finest is on course to become an unlikely hit – amongst locals at any rate.

The uplifting “cheesy pop” number Lovely Day The La La Song is playing on YouTube, while the single is available for download.

As well as promoting Portobello at its best, the video, which was filmed on the warmest day of the year, is also poised to raise thousands for Cancer Research UK.

Songwriter Tim Hegarty hopes the recent sunny spell will boost sales.

The video was shot in Portobello in July, and includes local landmarks such as Tower Amusements, the promenade and the beach. It stars actor Mark Ajai, below left, from Glasgow, as main character Woody, an ice-cream seller on the lookout for a potential love interest. Local women play the parts of the bikini-clad sunbathers who catch Woody’s eye, while children were enlisted to take to the beach for the Lovely Day dance.

Mr Hegarty’s own three boys – Hugh, 13, William, 12, and Henry, 10 – also star in the video as skateboarders.

The songwriter, who lives in the Grange, wrote a number-seven hit for D:Ream in the 1990s, called Shoot Me With Your Love, and has also written for Gloria Gaynor.

He got involved after a friend who had lost loved-ones to cancer mentioned the idea to him, and employed Freakworks in Leith to make the video for the song.

Mr Hegarty, 45, said: “I had a song that I had written years ago, which I actually co-wrote with my son Henry, who was five at the time.

“We went down to Portobello on the sunniest day of the year and it was great.

“I think I must be the first guy in history to get sunstroke in Portobello.

“All the girls in the video are just local girls, they’re not professional models, and the kids are all of the people who put the money in.

“One of the people who put the money in had lost his wife to cancer.”

Linda Summerhayes, spokeswoman for Cancer Research UK in Scotland, said: “It is thanks to the generosity of supporters like Tim that Cancer Research UK is able to invest nearly £34 million in Scotland. We wish him success in capturing the public’s imagination with this bright and breezy song.”

[email protected]