THE electrical chain Dixons is offering Christmas jobs to hundreds of Comet staff who face redundancy.

Dixons chief executive Sebastian James said he wants to hire as many workers as possible from its troubled rival to work in his PC World and Currys stores.

Administrators Deloitte who were appointed last week are keeping the 236 Comet stores open in the hope of finding a buyer, but 6,600 staff face potential redundancy.

A "fire sale" sale of older stock is expected to start at Comet stores in the coming days.

Mr James said 500 staff from Comet had already approached his firm for work.

"We have delayed our recruitment of 2,000 Christmas staff so that Comet colleagues who want to join our stores can get a chance to do so," he said.

"We are hoping we can get as many of the staff at Comet on board for Christmas and hopefully beyond,” he added.

Mr James explained that Comet staff were attractive to Dixons because they already know about its business and the products it sells. However he said that Dixons would not be trying to buy any Comet stores from the administrators.

"As we look across the country we are pretty much on all the same parks they are, so it doesn't really make sense for us to do that," he said.

Dixons has set up a website, dixonscareers.com, to recruit staff.