MOVE over Simon Cowell and David Walliams... a checkout supervisor from Darwen was the real star of prime-time television on Saturday night.

Checkout supervisor Krissie Atkins may be a bit of a local celeb after appearing in the Lancashire Telegraph in 2010 for belting out tunes and singing at the Darwen branch of Sainsbury’s, but now she can add being a TV star to her CV.

The 55-year-old, who has been at the store since it opened in 1999, features on the TV commercial celebrating Sainsbury’s 150th birthday which premiered on Saturday night.

She had to keep her trip to Kiev in the Ukraine in April, for filming, under wraps until the one-minute advert was aired.

She said: “It was amazing, I cannot believe I got to do it.

“My manager Mark Dowse told me to apply to be in it.

“I had to send over a video to get shortlisted.

“Sainsbury’s flew me out to the Ukraine and it was a great trip as it is a beautiful country.

“It was hard as everyone has been asking me about how I got on but I could not tell until it was on TV.”

In the advert, Krissie walks in with a group of Sainsbury’s employees and then she is handed a snorkel, some flippers and a Red Nose and then she jumps up and laughs.

However, there was another little surprise as Krissie was turned into an animated character on the cake in the advert. She said: “The advert shows the history of how John Sainsbury started the business with his wife Mary and how they kept jobs open during the war.

“It shows how Sainsbury’s have been doing fundraising for Red Nose Day and my animated character jumping into a bath of beans.

“It was good because I was myself and I am always happy.

“It was great to be part of the history and I can look back on it in the future.

“When I saw the advert at the end they managed to catch a shot of me wiping a tear away from my eye.”

Krissie believes her dad Peter had a role to play in getting cast for the advert.

She said: “When this was all going on my dad was in hospital but he died in February.

“I told him that I was applying for it and he told me to go for it.

“When he died I was not in the right frame of mind to do it but there was a delay in the shortlisting and I think it was down to him I got on.”