At about 11.30pm on Friday 5 December all the sleepless nights spent worrying about food allergies, the meetings, the WhatsApp messages, the emails and the last minute telephone calls had paid off and our Membership Officer Simon was finally able to relax and savour the success of the 41 Club Charity Night organised by him and his Charity Night Committee at Scarborough Rugby Club.
Although the evening was wet and very windy over 100 members and guests attended the event and were welcomed by a grand display of Christmas lights courtesy of the Rugby Club and 2 doormen pretending to be tough to prevent gate crashers.
After some pre-dinner drinks the evening proper started with a health and safety announcement from Simon ably assisted by 2 members of his “cabin crew” to point out the emergency exits and several jokes which were met with groans of anguish not laughter.
With Vice Chairman Richard acting as compere for the evening after a brief welcome from Chairman Dom he then introduced representatives from his 2 nominated charities for the year Scarborough Talking News and SPARKS to describe the services offered by their respective charities. In a very family affair Dom’s mother Mary spoke on behalf of Scarborough Talking News and his wife Nicky on behalf of SPARKS both of whom received a warm round of applause for their efforts.
At last the food was served. Rumour has it that it was the same menu as last year but whatever there were no grounds to criticise the offering save towards the end when the kitchen ran out of cheesecake for the dessert course.
While dessert was served entertainment was provided by Annie & King described on their Facebook page as “a crossover folk country upbeat” duo from Scarborough who stuck to their task well despite the distractions of guests eating their desserts and after dinner conversation.
With the audience well sated with both food and drink the delicate operation of prizing money out of wallets and handbags for the benefit of the 2 charities commenced. In an innovation the raffle ticket sellers had the use of a Sum Up machine to catch those who claimed to have no cash on them! Steve Slade did the honours of managing the raffle draw which did seem to favour some tables over others! It was also suspicious that many of the winners were 41 Club members but hey your correspondent is not bitter at having failed to win anything despite an enormous outlay!
Then it was on to the auction with Richard acting as auctioneer. Clearly a man who missed out on his preferred vocation in life and one who has watched too many American court room dramas or just likes making a noise with a gavel. Nonetheless he did a sterling job of extracting a large amount of money from his audience despite some very shady lots on offer including naked clay pigeon shooting and having a hair cut while eating a box of chocolates.
The evening ended with a disco from Magic Mike which allowed some of the guests to show their moves on the dance floor.
Although the final figures have still to be calculated the amount raised for the 2 charities is believed to be in the region of a very impressive £2,700.
Congratulations to Simon and his team for a highly successful Charity Night and thanks to all those who donated prizes for the raffle and auction whose generosity is much appreciated.
41 Club Charity Correspondent
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