Tesco employee vows not to speak to any customers for three months

A Tesco worker has promised not to speak to a single customer in work for three months.

It's not just shoppers getting the silent treatment from Lee Clark, who works at the Southchurch Road branch of Tesco in Southend-on-Sea.

Lee will also be staying silent with his colleagues, and says he will continue to do so for months.

But it's all for a good cause.

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The usually "noisy and chatty" Tesco worker, from down South is part way through a three-month sponsored silence whenever he's on shift to raise money for Cancer Research, British Heart Foundation and Diabetes UK.

The father-of-five, 40, started his annual fundraiser at the beginning of last month and will finish on April 10. His only form of communication at the moment is through flashcards, pens and paper.

Speaking while not at work, Lee said: "It could be quite draining because you try not to slip up and try to focus.

"It can be a horrible experience but, again, I'm lucky I can put myself in that position to help someone else and I'll happily do that every single time."

“That's what gets me through, it is usually every time because the sponsor silence is a very lonely place. I feel very lonely, it is quite isolated in a sense."

This will be Lee's 15th straight year taking part in his sponsored silence.

The Tesco customer assistant of 16 years decided to stay closemouthed during a nine-hour shift that year as he said he was known as the “singing man on the tills”.

In his first nine-hour silent shift all those years ago, he managed to raise approximately £800 for the Lennox Lewis Cancer Fund.

"It was phenomenal because I've never done anything like that in my life before, so