WHILE many of us were out shopping, walking or washing the car last weekend, a group of people from all corners of Britain were engaged in an altogether more unusual hobby – celebrating the resurrection.

Not the famous one where Jesus (allegedly) rose from the dead at Easter before ascending to Heaven to sit at the right hand of God.

Some of the modern-day hobbyists were wearing crucifixes, but otherwise bore little resemblance to their churchgoing Christian brethren.

For last Sunday, 2,000 bloodied, moaning souls lurched their way to London to celebrate that well-known festival of the undead: World Zombie Day.

Much to the bemusement of residents and tourists, the capital’s streets were filled with a multitude of gruesome individuals and grizzly goings-on.

Blood pouring from fake wounds, severed limbs (some being chewed), waxy white flesh, eyes with no pupils and ripped, stained clothing were the order of the day. Onlookers stopped and stared wide-eyed as they staggered past.

And it’s not just London which was swept up in a tide of the undead. Since its 2006 birth in Pittsburgh, USA – where George Romero filmed his classic Dawn Of The Dead movie – World Zombie Day has been unleashed in more than 50 cities worldwide and has a following of hundreds of thousands.

When the zombies are not eating brains or faking other despicable and tasteless acts, they are actually quite nice people. In good British dinner-party tradition, those who were planning on attending London Zombie Day were asked to RSVP to the website.

And keen to cater for even the most hard-to-please zombie, organiser Lauren Sanders, said: “We are trying to combine some of the best sights of London with all the fun of World Zombie Day. Some people travel here just for the day, so it’s nice to have the whole London experience.”

World Zombie Day wasn’t all horrible. The shuffling participants’ sponsored walk and pub crawl raised £10,000’s for St Mungo’s homeless charity.

Personally I’d rather run Race for Life – but each to their own!