7:00am Friday 20th November 2009
By Joseph Dyke
Schools, businesses and groups were today busy raising cash as Children in Need 2009 got underway.
A number of schools, including Buckingham Primary School and Teddington Secondary School, are planning to allow their students to wear their own clothes to the classroom in exchange for a donation to Children in Need.
Orleans Park School, in Twickenham, has gone even further with the students encouraged to dress in spotty clothes and the most successful form getting a free trip bowling.
Twickenham's Waldegrave School for Girls got competitive with its fundraising yesterday.
In a competition called "I'm a teacher, get me out of here", eight teachers - Jackie Shiels, Hannah Hearn, Gemma Lloyd, Sarah Mullen, Dan Novak, Daljit Mahoon, Jacqui Green, Jacqui Bashford - battled against each other over seven different rounds with one teacher being eliminated after every round.
Challenges included an attempt to pin the nose on Pudsey, a sack race, build a tower from 10 plastic cups and eating Pudsey's food, which included "Cushy peas" - a mixture of Custard and mushy peas.
Miss Shiels - Head of the school's Eliot House - took first prize, with Miss Lloyd taking the runners up spot.
Elsewhere, the Feltham Sea Scouts Group has already raised £110 through various events, including bingo, a raffle and a cake sale.
On Friday, Boots in Feltham will do a Macarena for Pudsey and West Middlesex Hospital is to run competitions including: Guess the weight of the cake, how many sweets in the jar and name the bear.
Fundraising in Richmond was kicked off at the National Archive in Kew.
As part of the BBC's Money Can't Buy series, a special prize was auctioned off in association with the BBC program Who Do You Think You Are?
The package auctioned included a behind-the-scenes tour of the national archive, a session with a family historian and lunch with EastEnders actor Barbara Windsor.
The prize was sold for an incredible £11,000 and head of media relations, Mel Hide, joked "we almost beat Westlife as they were bought for £13,000!"
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