Radio Marsden 2008 "Summer Boots Day" is a massive success!

Twice every year, a collection of Radio Marsden volunteers gathers outside Boots in Sutton for our "Boots Day" Fundraiser, where we play music, shake a few tins and hopefully raise a penny or two for Radio Marsden. For our summer fundraiser, just like Wimbledon, the weather can be a little unpredictable - sometimes it pours with rain, sometimes the sun shines, and sometimes the weird and wonderful happens - but one thing is guaranteed, it's always a lot of fun!

This year surpassed all expectations - despite the weather starting a little miserable, the sun soon appeared and we found our collecting tins starting to get a little heavy.

All of the classic crowd-pleasers came out, you know the ones... Sweet Caroline... Come on Eileen... and not forgetting Lulu's "Shout". Our resident dancer-in-chief Charles Reynolds pleased the crowd with some great moves, and even managed to score a couple of dancing partners!

All the time the coins (and notes) were flowing in. We knew it was one for the record books when it took three of us to carry the bag of money up to the car park... and when we finally finished counting the total raised was an astonishing £1272.44!

Every penny of the funds collected will go towards helping us keep Radio Marsden running, so that we can continue to do our work for the patients of the Royal Marsden Hospital. It costs a lot to keep the station on the air - to give you an example, our biggest expenditure is maintaining our studio equipment. Routine work on this is an expensive business, and occasionally items will develop faults, needing repair or replacement. We also spend a small fortune on keeping our Record Library up-to-date, so that when a patient requests a song we are able to fulfil it.

Radio Marsden Chairman Jason Reynolds said "I can't remember a previous Boots Day when so many people came up to me for a chat about Radio Marsden and commented how much they enjoyed the music. We really are hugely grateful to the people of Sutton, without whose generosity we could not have achieved this fantastic amount."

We'd also like to thank the staff and management of Boots in Sutton, for allowing us to use their forecourt. Without them our bi-annual fundraising event would not be possible. Thanks for having us folks!

We'll be back in December playing some seasonal tunes for you while you do the Christmas shopping... do you know what you'll be buying yet?

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