Telegraph Charity Appeal: How you, our generous readers, helped us raise a record breaking sum this year
Telegraph readers raised a record breaking £100,050.91 for good causes on Sunday as the paper's journalists took donations during a phone-in for this year's Christmas Charity Appeal.
Over 1,000 readers rang in to raise money for our three Christmas charities, Wooden Spoon, The Silver Line and Leukaemia Care.
Telegraph writers and editors including Allison Pearson, Chris Evans, Judith Woods, Robbie Collin, Philip Johnston, Camilla Tominey and CEO Nick Hugh were joined by contributors as Kathy Lette, Kay Burley and Anthony Horowitz.
Representatives of the three charities were also present, including Dame Esther Rantzen, founder of the Silver Line, Lady Penny Mountbatten, patron of Leukaemia Care, and former rugby international Ollie Phillips, ambassador for Wooden Spoon.
Your donations will make a huge different to the work our charities carry out all year round. The Silver Line provides a lifeline to the millions of older people around the UK who find themselves living alone with very few people to speak to.
Leukaemia Care offers information and support to people affected by blood cancer and, crucially, works to increase rates of early diagnosis. Thanks to your donations, they hope to spread the word about leukaemia symptoms and cut the numbers of people who are diagnosed at a late stage.
Wooden Spoon harnesses the power of the UK's rugby community to give purpose and confidence to young people struggling with disabilities or social challenges. Your generosity will enable them to improve the lives of so many disenfranchised young people.
You can read more about our charities which you generously donated to this year below, and here. And if you haven't had made a donation to our appeal and would like to do so, please visit telegraph.co.uk/charity.
The Silver Line
Bob Lowe’s wife Kath died 65 years after they were married and, he says, “more to the point, 72 years after we first kissed”. After such a long and happy marriage, Bob suddenly found himself quite alone, and struggling to cope with an overwhelming sense of loneliness.
After reading a newspaper article by Dame Rantzen, in which she had movingly written about her own experience of widowhood, Bob decided to write to her, sending her a copy of a poem he had written about his late wife.
He didn’t know that Esther carried his letter with her, quoting from it regularly and using it as proof of the vital need to support lonely older people.
The first Bob heard of it was when his telephone rang one winter’s evening in 2013. It was Esther, inviting him to the launch of The Silver Line.
The Silver Line is the only national, free, confidential helpline dedicated to older people. Since its launch, the line has received over 2.5 million calls, most of them made overnight or at weekends when no other helpline is available for older people who may be lonely, isolated or confused. Over half of callers say they have no one else to speak to.
But though they answer as many calls as they can, the line can currently only get to three out of four calls due to the high demand. Your money will help ensure every call can be answered.
The Silver Line also offers weekly calls to people aged 55 and over who would like to build a telephone friendship with a friendly and supportive volunteer. The calls take place on the same day, at the same time each week and older people and volunteers are matched carefully to ensure they share some common interests.
In today’s paper, Esther Rantzen meets up with regular caller Peggy Weaver. Read this, and more of Bob’s story in the Saturday section.
To contact The Silver Line (thesilverline.org.uk), call 0800 4 70 80 90.
Leukaemia Care
Rebekah Birch was just 20 when she was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukaemia, a form of the disease which usually only affects those aged 60 and above. For months, Rebekah had begged campus doctors at the American university where she was studying to take her strange, debilitating symptoms seriously. Even on a visit back home, her GP took some convincing. “He didn’t think there was anything seriously wrong with me, but, upon my insistence, booked me some blood tests for the end of the month.”
By the following evening, the surgery was trying desperately to get in touch with her.
“I called them, and they wanted me to urgently go in to hospital. They sounded very nervous on the phone, telling me there was a problem with my blood that needed further testing. It was obvious that it was serious, and I was terrified.”
By the next morning, Rebekah had been diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukaemia and told she would need a bone marrow biopsy and chemotherapy. Months of gruelling treatment would follow, along with the dawning realisation that she would likely live with the disease for the rest of her life.
Rebekah says she now realises that she had been experiencing all the “obvious, major symptoms of leukaemia”, but no doctor seemed to be able to join the dots. “It’s shocking that it took so long for me to be diagnosed when the signs were all there.”
Patients with leukaemia are almost twice as likely to be diagnosed as an emergency case compared to people with other kinds of cancer. Greater awareness of the signs and symptoms of leukaemia is vital to lowering this figure.
Leukaemia Care work to raise awareness and improve the early referral rate. “Money donated by generous Telegraph readers will help to offer leukaemia patients, and their loved ones, emotional and financial support. It’ll also help to raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of leukaemia and support health care professionals to make those early referrals.”
They also provide support and information to people affected by blood cancer. “Surveys have shown that despite 45 per cent of leukaemia patients saying they felt more depressed or anxious following a diagnosis, only 18 per cent were offered any psychological support.
“In 2019, Leukaemia Care launched a counselling scheme enabling patients and their loved ones to access six sessions of counselling. This appeal will enable this work to continue for the next 12 months.”
Wooden Spoon
Wooden Spoon takes its name from a drunken afternoon in 1983 when one of its founders, Nigel Timson, found himself on the receiving end of a particularly cruel practical joke. A lifelong fan of English rugby, Timson and friends had arranged a trip to Dublin to watch England play Ireland in that year’s Five Nations Championship (it didn’t become the Six Nations until Italy joined in 2000). They were plunged into disappointment when England suffered a 25-15 defeat, sending them to the bottom of the Five Nations table.
They were drowning their sorrows at dinner with some Irish friends when the friends got up and left the table. “We thought they’d gone to the toilet, but they didn’t come back and we thought they might have done a runner, leaving us to pick up the tab,” recalls Timson.
“Then after about 10 or 15 minutes we heard this rap on the table, and all the diners stopped and looked round. Our Irish friends walked through the restaurant with a big silver platter, and on it was a wooden spoon.”
It was a reference, as rugby fans will have worked out, to the legend of the ‘Wooden Spoon’, ceremoniously awarded to the loser of the Five Nations. Six months later, the charity was born.
Wooden Spoon was founded on the simple maxim that playing rugby instills young people with an understanding of teamwork, a sense of purpose and responsibility, not to mention boosting their confidence and fitness. The charity is adamant rugby shouldn’t be an elitist sport but should be accessible to all, and works to bring the game to young people who struggle with disabilities or social challenges.
The charity also enlists young adults who are not in jobs, education, or training – known by the government as NEETs, of which there are almost 800,000 in the UK – into community rugby squads. The young players, many of whom grew up in care or experienced family breakdown as a child, are sceptical at first that joining a rugby team will change their life, but flourish once out on the pitch.
