THE voices of children drowned by aircraft noise will be recorded in a new anti-Cliffe airport strategy masterminded by celebrity Jools Holland.

The musician and television presenter will next week send a sound engineer to record the children singing at St Helen's Church in Cliffe.

He will then organise the overdubbing of thunderous aeroplane sounds over their voices. The vicar of St Helen's, the Rev Edward Wright, who has liaised with the star over the project, said: "I have spoken to Jools about this and he has agreed to send a sound engineer down. He is very much against the airport and fears for how it will affect local people."

The engineer will turn up at the church to tape the boys and girls from St Helen's Primary School singing the hymn Make Me a Channel of Your Peace.

The aircraft sounds will later be mixed in at a studio and the completed recording will then be played from a car with speakers touring around the Hoo Peninsula.

Mr Holland, presenter of the music show Later with Jools Holland, has recently bought Cooling Castle, a few miles from Cliffe, and has already expressed his opposition to the plans.

Mr Wright, also an active anti-airport campaigner, organised a prayer session over the issue at his church on Saturday. He said: "We prayed for a change of heart over the plans but not for an airport to be built somewhere else. We also asked for God's mercy for man's greed, which are behind proposals such as this."

Leaflets were issued advertising the prayers in which he wrote: "It has got to be good to appeal to God on behalf of our communities and environment."