| And they did
it.......... with a little bit of help from Taggart! |
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| And they did
it.......... with a little bit of help from Taggart! |
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This
is their fascinating story as told by Diana Hunter.
Our working Mission Statement is :
| We the Parish Community of Sacred Heart and Christ the King, Grangemouth, following in the tradition of our founders, are happy to belong to the Church in the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh as members of St Mungo's Deanery. |
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Over the years we have become valued members of the Grangemouth Council of Churches. We are commited to valuing and maintaining the energies given to building Sacred Heart Church and Christ the King Church Centre in Grangemouth, reaching out to the whole community with worship at the heart. Today we are called to pray and to work ever more closely together in a spirit of reconciliation to witness the love of Christ to the poor and the needy. |
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Hi, I'm Diana Hunter. In August 2002, I was approached and asked if I would like to help raise funds for a new church organ, Fr Leo had given the church organist Brian Sweeney the go ahead to organise a committee to raise the massive sum of £18,000 to replace the ageing church organ.Not an easy task as our committee consisted of only 5 people, the church organist, Brian Sweeney, his wife Margaret Sweeney, Rose Watt and Margaret O'Donnell who were all in the church choir, and |
| myself.I'm not quite sure why they asked me, maybe someone told them that I was unlikely to say no. |
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Our fund raising events included a Celidh, Daffodil Tea Afternoon, Taste of Europe evening, Jumble sale, a Charity shop which was open for a week and a Bonus Ball based on the bonus ball drawn on Saturday by the National Lottery. But our main fund raising event was with the radio show recorded by BBC Radio Scotland. A lot of hard work went into all of these events, I sometimes felt that I didn't do as much as the other members in the committee but my feet would always tell me differently at the end of the day or evenings. |
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Committee
member, Margaret O'Donnell was in conversation with a
customer about their respective sons.
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| "I contacted Radio
Scotland's 'Lets Do the Show Right Here' and the producer
phoned me back to say that they were interested in my
idea" Margaret Sweeney said, very excitedly. At this point I didn't have the heart to actually ask what she was on about. I had never heard of the programme and was only aware that the radio station actually existed. "I am going to go back into writing," says Margaret. "My brother-in-law has persuaded me to do this." She then told me of how she used to write a lot when her father in law was alive. He was the one true believer in her ability to write and how she stopped writing when he died. Margaret had decided that she would like to put on a murder mystery evening for the show but instead of the BBC supplying us with a writer she wanted to write the play herself and hope that the BBC would then put the money they save toward a good actor/celebrity to be in the play. |
| Now, I'm
jumping ahead here, at this point the rest of the
committee - that's me, Rose and the other Margaret had
absolutely no idea what was going to be involved in all
of this. We had a meeting in Brian and Margaret's home. We were told that we were putting on a murder mystery evening and that we would need to provide some local talent, we would need a venue and we would have to think about catering. To be honest the rest of us still really didn't have a clue what was involved as we were none the wiser about Lets Do the Show Right Here....I'm going to abbreviate that now to LDTSRH, but we were a willing committee and always open to new fund raising ideas so we started with a list of people who would possibly be able to entertain us that evening. I immediately volunteered my two nieces Stephanie and Paula Zak ( watch out for Paula this year in Pop Idol...I wonder if she knows yet that I have sent her application form in for her ...hahahaha). Rose volunteers her granddaughter Amiee, a superb cellist (watch out for her too in the near future). Brian wonders out aloud if he could approach a local business man in our congregation that owns a very busy restaurant/bistro if he would be willing to provide the location. Well he could only say no, after that we would be looking at local community halls as possible venues. |
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| We needed to come up with a
price for tickets too. The price would have to reflect
the entertainment value and food being supplied. I
volunteered to design the tickets, programme, posters and
flyers on my computer using a leaflet that LDTSHR had
provided. |
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Also Brian was going to approach local businesses for donations of prizes for the grand prize draw.
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| The next meeting would actually be with the producers of the BBC. Margaret was keeping so much under her hat and was only giving out the information as it was being confirmed by the BBC. No one yet had any idea how big this was going to be. Arriving at the restaurant, the rest of us were introduced to the production team, Mairihd Anne and Karen. Mairihd Anne asked if she could record our talk. |
| Everything inside of me
screamed in excitement - we were being recorded for the
radio! On the outside I
smiled calmly and said certainly go ahead. Now I
was getting excited about that but there was more to
come. First we were shown around the Beancross farm by Gerry and then we sat down to discuss what was going to happen. "How many people are you hoping to attract to this event?" About 200 people, I wasn't at this time worried about the number. |
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"I've written a play and I would like the committee to act in it." |
When
Margaret says this to the production team, I tried not to
choke into my cup of coffee and like the rest of the
committee we politely laughed - "Oh what
a good idea!!!!" |
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| The production team very kindly gave me some more advice and said they would provide pictures of Jackie Bird, the presenter of the show, and official logos for the show to put on the leaflets and programme. |
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Everything seemed
very exciting as we had quite a few semi professional
people lined up to entertain us. It was also agreed
to keep the play as three short acts and have the other
entertainment in-between. . . . . . . . . .FOUR WEEKS TO GO ! Four weeks prior to the show we had a second meeting with the BBC production team. Everything was fine with the venue, my tickets were ready for printing, my posters were just waiting for confirmation of our celebrity and Brian was busy approaching businesses to advertise in the programme. We still hadn't had confirmation from all of the people we had asked to entertain us but we had to have some kind of programme for the evening set up. |
| .The production team introduced Margaret to a
scriptwriter who would advise her on how to set her story
down in play form. The play would now be three short
acts, each lasting five minutes and the production team
suggested we enlist the help of a local drama group so
that we as committee members would be free to supervise
the evening - which was excellent news to us. The idea of
supervising on the night was much more appealing. . |
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| We had obtained
permission from our local library to sell tickets there.
It started off as a bit of a nightmare. No one knew
what LDTSRH was all about, we dare not tell the
public that we still didn't have the entertainment lined
up yet. Rehearsals still hadn't started as the production team were thinking about using a play written by their own writer Denise Miner and we were worried that the whole thing was being taken out of Margaret's hands. We had just pulled off a publicity stunt with the help of the Falkirk Herald - our local paper - and we just didn't know if it was going to make any difference to the sale of tickets, as we had already publicised the fact that it was being written by a local person. The publicity stunt that was due to be published in our local paper involve me acting as a dead body with Margaret, Julie Reid, a member of the drama group and Brian standing over me. |
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Our only confirmed
line up were my two nieces and their friend, plus Rose's
grand-daughter, the award winning cellist. I remember one of the first questions the production team put to Rose : "Are you sure your grand-daughter won't mind being volunteered for this show Rose?" Here reply is one of the best quotes aired on the actual radio show on 31st October 2003. "There's more chance of the Pope leading the Orange Parade than for my grand-daughter to say no!" ........"it must have been the power of prayer....." Finally with two weeks to go, each and everyone of us in that committee must have been praying hard because miraculously we had more acts than we could actually use and sadly had to refuse some offers of entertainment. The local drama group were in full swing with rehearsals and the play was all Margaret's own work and on the Sunday before the show we had our one and only full rehearsal without the BBC team. |
| IT'll BE ALL RIGHT ON THE NIGHT.............. |
| On the day of the show we
got to meet Jackie Bird and James Macpherson, they
were absolutely lovely people and very kindly posed with
the children to have pictures taken. During the afternoon rehearsals Margaret and I sat watching the BBC create an amazing transformation and turn what we thought would be a fairly good show into an amazing professional production. |
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That evening there were over 200 people in the function suite |
The
entertainment was first class |
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We were on cloud nine with the success of the evening. |
The
show was aired on Halloween and it was very, very
entertaining. On the evening we raised just under £4,000
for the church organ - plus, there was still money to
come in from ticket sales and there were a few donations
after the evening as well. Margaret entertained us
that evening with a poem and is enjoying writing again. |
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