HIGH street bank bopper Howard Brown (pictured with Newport staff Karen Pritchard and Helen Jones) got in the groove when he sang in the rain in Newport.

Howard won overnight recognition after appeared singing and dancing along to a Tom Jones song in a Halifax TV advertisement.

The Liverpool football fan dropped in on the Newport branch of the Halifax on a whistle-stop tour of the region to extol the virtues of the bank's new current account.

Halifax employee Howard, aged 36, single, of Acocks Green, Birmingham, who works in the Sheldon branch in the city, needed little persuasion to go singing and dancing in the rain outside the Commercial Street, Halifax.

Branch manager Tony Harkin Harkin said: "We are very pleased to have the opportunity to offer our customers the chance to meet Howard, the well known face of the Halifax."