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IN TOUCH – In Touch at Christmas

TX:Ìý 21.12.2021Ìý 2040-2100

PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

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PRODUCER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý BETH HEMMINGS

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Music – Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas – Katriona Taylor

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White

Good evening.Ìý That may not be quite the first time you’ve heard that song this Christmas but jazz and soul singer, Katriona Taylor, puts the In Touch stamp on it for us.Ìý We weren’t actually allowed to have the live studio festive bash that we wanted, so we added Katriona to our In Touch bubble, along with three other guests that we’ve enjoyed on the programme over the past year or so and who we’ve asked to run the rule over the pleasures and pitfalls of Christmas blind style.Ìý And we’ll be meeting them all in just a moment.

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But, first of all, if Christmas is for children, as we’re always told, we’ve got an upbeat story for you tonight.Ìý It’s a salute to St Vincent’s School in Liverpool, who’ve been dubbed ‘climate heroes’.Ìý In amongst the national curriculum their visually impaired pupils have been concentrating on how they can do their bit to ease the environmental crisis we’ve heard so much about this year.Ìý They’ve been planting and growing their own produce and handing it out to those in need, writing stories to encourage and influence others, thinking up ways technology can reduce our carbon footprint.Ìý Well, they’ve received a lot of national recognition and a few days ago, we dropped in to see them.Ìý We arrived just in time for morning assembly where headteacher, John Patterson, celebrated their achievements.

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St. Vincent’s morning assembly

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Patterson

Good morning, everybody.Ìý

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All

Morning.

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Patterson

Are we feeling Christmassy?

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All

Yeah.

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Patterson

I am exceptionally proud of you as climate heroes.Ìý I’ve loved all the stuff you’ve done with COP26.Ìý I’ve loved all the stuff you’ve done in the grounds.Ìý But today, we’ve got a lovely surprise, which I’m going to ask Councillor Barbara Murry to hand over to, I think, Abianne and Harvey.

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Murry

I’m here today about something else the school does called Northwest in Bloom.Ìý It’s your neighbourhood competition.

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Farouk

I would love to be a climate hero, you know.

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Murry

Well, you are, but I’ll tell you for why.Ìý St Vincent’s school has won this national certificate of distinction.Ìý So, very well done all of you.

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Clapping

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Patterson

So, I think, Abianne you are well good enough to take everybody to the poly tunnel.

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Abianne

This way to the poly tunnel.Ìý This way.

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White

Now you don’t normally expect a gardener of the year to be 11 but Abianne Farouk is both 11 and Royal Horticultural Society Gardener of the Year.Ìý We’re in a poly tunnel, which I’ve never been in before, just explain where we are and what there is around here.

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Farouk

Well, we’ve been growing all our crops here.Ìý Spring onions, broad beans, we’ve even grown sweetcorn here before.

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White

You’re all here described as climate heroes, just explain where this all fits in.

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Farouk

I always think about nature.Ìý I always feel bad about this planet, that we’re burning fossil fuel and this planet is getting hot.Ìý I think everybody should do their part.

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White

Is this something you’re going to go on doing do you think?

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Farouk

Yeah, I’m going to – I’m never going to leave gardening now.Ìý I’m going to do gardening as long as I can.

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White

Well, Abianne, thanks very much for showing me your garden.

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Teacher

Going back into the school.

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Patterson

This young man is bilingual.Ìý Hit me with some Bengali.

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Farouk in Bangladeshi

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White

Abianne, is there not a Bangladeshi word for broad beans?

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Farouk

I think there is, it’s just I don’t know it maybe.

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White

The irrepressible Abianne Farouk.Ìý Think he might be a tour guide one day.

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But just about everyone at St. Vincent’s has made a contribution this year.Ìý And another highlight was the group of pupils who went to Glasgow to drop in on COP26 to find out what the world’s leaders were proposing to do about all these problems.Ìý I spoke to Beth Fowler and, first, Anthony Madden, what had he made of COP26.

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Madden

My impression was really that it’s something that could hopefully save the planet and the future generation to come.Ìý There was me and another kid called Amelial.Ìý He went to meet the President of Costa Rica, while I get to be interviewed by people from Extreme Hangout.

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White

Amongst the things the school has done, I think, has been sending seeds?Ìý Tell me a bit about that and who they were sent to and what that means.

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Madden

So, the seeds of hope were wild flowers from the school grounds that were sent to all people from COP26.

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White

There were a few other big names weren’t there?Ìý There was one rather famous Liverpudlian I believe.

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Madden

Trying to remember now because we gave it out to so many people.

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White

Paul McCartney?

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Madden

Yeah he was really thankful.Ìý He said that we are an inspiration for what we’ve done.

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White

Let me bring in Beth because I think, Beth, your big interest in really is technology, what kind of innovation have you been particularly interested in?

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Fowler

We worked with Kellogg’s a few years ago to create accessible packaging.Ìý So, they had braille on the cereal and special codes that you could scan in and it would display a digital version.Ìý But it was done in a way so that it was compatible with accessible devices, so that anyone could find out whatever was in the food.

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White

Anything else that you’ve been particularly interested in?

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Fowler

We did research on a device called the All Cam, which is a set of glasses that has a camera connected and it’s supposed to audio narrate signs, faces.

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White

And what did you think of it?

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Fowler

Great idea but needs a bit more tweaking, more in depth programming to make it more realistic.

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White

The whole emphasis, so far, that we’ve been talking about here, has been about the environment and climate and so forth, do you think there is a link here between the two?

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Fowler

I think it depends, like, on the one hand you have to sort of think of the environment but on the other hand, there’s got to be a fine line between protecting the environment but making sure something is still accessible to everyone because you can’t have one or the other.

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White

So, trying to put all these various projects together, I wanted to know, from the man who’s been spearheading it all, headteacher John Patterson, what exactly was it all designed to achieve.

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Patterson

Our young people are storywriters, we’ve heard a lot about journey for peace, we’ve heard a lot about the magic bench, that’s where young people’s creative writing and innovation is being used for climate awareness.Ìý We’re seeing innovations around the world growing.Ìý I want our young people to be involved in that, investing in visually impaired creativity.Ìý We want to feed that into and encourage that into innovation for climate action.

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White

You mentioned a couple of the projects – magic bench, which the youngsters have been talking to us about – just explain that, what that actually is.

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Patterson

Magic bench is a continuation of the journey for peace.Ìý So, our young people asked Liverpool statues how do we find peace.Ìý What it is, is creative writing.Ìý That feeds into the magic bench, which is a national project.Ìý The magic bench lands in our local park and a young visually impaired boy is enabled and empowered to talk with nature.Ìý We took that to COP26 and we gifted that alongside our wild flower seeds.

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White

It’s a bit hippyish this headmaster, is this going to make a real difference?

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Patterson

I think we need to get back to being a bit hippiest, in the sense of loving nature, loving one another but don’t just say it’s somebody else doing it, if it’s not you – why?Ìý And if not now, when?Ìý And when young people with visual impairments, as Josh said, I’m doing my bit for nature I may never see, what are you doing?

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White

So, many congratulations to St Vincent’s.Ìý That was headmaster John Patterson, who I think took the suggestion he was a bit of a hippy very well really.

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Right, now, for the party games.Ìý We’ve already met Katriona Taylor but also with us is another musical couple – opera singer Denise Leigh and multi-instrumentalist Stefan Andrishin and stand-up comedian Jamie MacDonald fresh from successes this year both on radio and television.Ìý Your role tonight, is to tease out a few of the challenges of Christmas, which people who don’t have a sight problem sometimes just don’t get.Ìý For instance, presents, I mean people often say to me – oh but you’re so difficult to buy for, what sort of things do blind people want – as if we were some kind of rare alien breed.Ìý I want to know from all of you, what was your inappropriate present.

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Denise, I’m going to start with you on this.

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Leigh

I seem to remember I was going out with a lad once who obviously had not grasped the essence of being visually impaired and he bought me a board game, I think it was trivial pursuits or something which required a lot of reading.Ìý He said – I will keep presenting you with these things until you start reading them.Ìý I kept the Trivial Pursuits and binned off the boyfriend.

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White

Seems like a good decision.Ìý Jamie, what about you?

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MacDonald

Well, it’s all about intention, so you can’t get too annoyed.Ìý But my parents got me a hard-shelled baseball cap, so I think if I was ever out with my street gang and I accidentally clattered into a lamp-post I’d be unaffected.Ìý But it was accompanied – it was the weirdest combo – with a white silk scarf.Ìý And that was only a few years ago and I’ve still never found the social event that requires a hard-shelled baseball cap and white scarf combo.

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White

Katriona, what about you?

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Taylor

A mop – a steam mop – which I thought – hmm, I don’t think I’m the right person to be cleaning the floor.

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White

No one likes these domesticated…

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Leigh

That’s grounds for divorce, that is grounds for divorce.

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Taylor

Yeah, I agree.

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White

Now Stefan, you’ve been set up a bit here, because I’ve been promised a couple of good ‘uns.

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Andrishin

I did, when I was significantly younger, get the original Nintendo entertainment system for Christmas, which was great because I could get to level two of Super Mario but then after that I was kind of left in the dust by my other siblings.Ìý So, my role was just to sit and watch them play on my Christmas present.

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White

Yeah, it was about 30 years too early wasn’t it really, I think games stuff is just becoming accessible.

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Leigh

But you nearly bought me a present last year and that was nearly a disaster.

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Andrishin

I don’t know about you Katriona but as a musician the last thing you often want to do when you’ve finished playing music is going to music or you don’t have a change to go to music, it’s like working in a chocolate factory and then eating chocolate.Ìý I decided, on a whim, to get one of these experience days.Ìý It was an outdoor concert but from the point of view of us being audience members for a nice change, until I discovered, on closer inspection, that this experience that I’d found on a coupon website happened to be one of the concerts that Denise was about to sing in the following summer.Ìý So, that would have been really very awkward.

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Leigh

And that was directly because he can’t see because I was actually in the picture.

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White

A couple of you mentioned buying presents.Ìý I mean I’m just wondering if anyone’s got a technique for buying presents as blind people.Ìý I don’t mean the people you’re closest to, I mean the people who you think you ought to buy something for but haven’t got a clue what they want.Ìý You can’t really go window shopping.Ìý I used to observe what my wife, who could see, did, which is to go around, look in windows – oh that’ll be alright.Ìý Has anyone got a technique to get round that – Katriona.

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Taylor

I’ve got one that I’m using recently which is just to get a voucher because that way they can buy what they like.

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Leigh

It’s such a cop out but…

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White

It is a cop out but it’s a good one, yeah.

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Leigh

…it’s a brilliant idea.

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MacDonald

I’d laugh if it was for a shop you don’t like.

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White

Denise, you made the point to me that you often have to spend Christmas in someone else’s house.Ìý The problem is?

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Leigh

Well, well, I have a story, it’s not about me, this is about my mum.Ìý She went to stay with a friend of hers from school, it was for Christmas or near to Christmas anyway.Ìý And she had the age-old thing, which we’re particularly vulnerable to, of not being able to remember the layout of the house.Ìý We’ve all been there, we’ve all…

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White

I’m beginning to see where this is going.

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Leigh

…you’re looking for the bathroom when you’re desperate for a wee and you’re doing that wee dance.Ìý Anyway, yeah, she got up in the night, couldn’t remember where the toilet was, wee’d on the doormat and then had to suffer the indignity the next morning of her friend’s parents saying – wow, it snowed so much in the night it’s come under the door, the door mat’s soaking.Ìý

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MacDonald

I did that once; I went out the window.

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White

I did ask you to remember the watershed.

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MacDonald

That’s exactly what I did.

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White

[Laughter]Ìý I think this is my cue to change the direction of this conversation.Ìý Households are always very busy at Christmas and often it feels as if we’re a bit in the way.Ìý I’m interested in the jobs that are allocated to us to try to make us feel useful, or at least to get us somewhere else and not under their feet in the kitchen.Ìý For instance, I’m often asked to blow up the balloons and I can’t even do that very efficiently.Ìý I wondered if other people had had that experience?

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MacDonald

I am the finest sprout scorer in Glasgow, I will be given the sprouts.Ìý And I don’t even know if that’s like necessary, are you meant to put a little score in the bottom of the sprouts because I do about a million of them.Ìý I’ve never dared to try and do a kind of placebo batch.

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White

I mean are you suggesting, Jamie, that they might have given you a completely false job just to keep you…

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MacDonald

Yeah, like [indistinct words], yeah.

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White

Gardening out the way, I still want to know what the Bangladeshi for broad bean is, that’s still bothering me.Ìý Now this is a genuine request for advice for me because the thing that I really am completely hopeless at is wrapping, I cannot handle wrapping presents.

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Andrishin

Count me out.

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White

You can’t either Stefan?

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Andrishin

No, no.Ìý You give it to the person, the wrapping paper goes [weak sound] and it just capitulates, that’s pretty much how I wrap presents.

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MacDonald

As long as one side looks presentable then the back end looks like Freddie Kruger got it and it’s just like full of like weird creases and mad directions of tape.Ìý But then, from the front, it’s like – that’s not too bad – it’s just like just make sure you hand it the right way round.

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Andrishin

Gift bags.

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Taylor

Exactly.

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Leigh

Gift bags are such a cop out.

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White

You’d better spell that out for those who don’t know Stefan.

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Andrishin

Yeah, yeah, you just plop the item into the gift bag, pull the drawstring and there you go.

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MacDonald

If you plop the gift voucher in a gift bag, that’s got to be the ultimate cop out present ever.

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White

That is what I hoped we would find the super solution to about three problems at once and I think you’ve done it.

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Leigh

Do you know what else is a big problem though?Ìý It’s the blooming labels, how on earth are we meant to read the labels?

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White

Yeah, that’s one problem and the other problem is when everyone’s unwrapping presents, you know that thing – I don’t know if you celebrate with the tree and the presents coming off… And of course, everyone’s getting very excited – ooh, ahh, isn’t that lovely – and you haven’t got the faintest idea who’s been given what.

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Taylor

You do need someone – a friendly soul – to be telling you what’s being given to who.Ìý The thing I find tricky is writing the Christmas cards, you can do it with magnification but it kind of takes all the joy out of it.Ìý So, I’m doing my bit for the planet and…

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White

Not doing them.

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Taylor

…yeah, not writing any of those.

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Leigh

I’ve brailled all mine this year because my thinking is if people can give me handwritten Christmas cards, I can give them brailled them.Ìý And people do love to see their names written in braille.

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White

They do, that is absolutely true.

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Leigh

And it’s better than somebody saying – what five-year-old wrote this – when you send them a Christmas card.

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White

Well, I may not be any good at wrapping, in fact I definitely am not, but I sure now how to wrap up a programme.Ìý I can – did you like that Denise?

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Leigh

±õ…

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White

Incredibly corny.Ìý But I can predict that we’re now going to hear from all those frighteningly competent blind people, who’ll be serving up Christmas dinner for 16 and they wrap things impeccably.Ìý My thanks though to our honest guests for being so frank with us – Jamie MacDonald, Katriona Taylor, Denise Leigh, Stefan Andrishin rhyming with musician.Ìý Thank you all very much indeed.Ìý I hope you all have the Christmas you want, whatever form it takes.Ìý

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And that’s it from me, Peter White, producer Beth Hemmings and studio manager John Cole.Ìý Goodbye, except that we’ve asked Katriona to play us out with another song we hardly ever hear at this time of year.

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Music – Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire – Katriona Taylor

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