Celebrity ambassadors keep the flag flying for Pendleside Hospice

Burnley born-and-bred Clarets striker Jay Rodriguez was the figure head at the launch of the Keep Your Hospice Open campaign when Pendleside predicted it would lose £1million – a quarter of its annual running costs – when the coronavirus crisis first took a hold.

Jay, a long-time supporter of the hospice, was featured on Granada TV and in an exclusive interview with highly-respected sports journalist Henry Winter in The Times.

In both, he passionately told how the hospice had cared for his grandad Brian Threfall in such a special way before he died and how important it was that the Burnley and Pendle community should rally to ensure that Pendleside didn’t fall victim to virus itself in financial terms.

Since then he has quietly maintained his support in helping the hospice keep its head above water as it was forced to reduce its day care services to virtual services because of social distancing at the same time as ramping up its inpatients’ care from 10 to 18 beds and hospice at home capacity to care for more people in their own homes, to help ease the pressure on NHS hospital beds.

Jay’s stunning goal against Manchester United in Burnley’s 2-0 win at Old Trafford last January has been voted the Clarets goal of the season.

And he has donated a replica scoreboard to mark the occasion signed by himself and the rest of the Burnley squad to be auctioned in aid of the hospice.

Meanwhile Radio 1 DJ Jordan North, while living more than 200 miles away in London, has worked hard during the pandemic to keep the cash coming in.

On the last Sunday of every month he has hosted a virtual pub quiz on a facebook live stream which has attracted an audience from around the world – all in aid of Pendleside.

The last one was on August 30 and in total Jordan’s quiz master efforts have raised more than £5,000.

He said: “We started the quiz in April and I never believed it would get so popular. We have had people as far away as Canada taking part.

“Some of the highlights for me have been to see members of my family and friends from the Burnley area all having a go at the questions. And a fan of my radio show called Lauren who has never been to Burnley took part and contributed every time.”

Jordan thanked Pendleside’s fundraising team for setting the questions which always included a category on Burnley FC.

He said: “If I ever find my way on to Mastermind my specialist subject will be the Clarets from 2000 to the present day!”

For the final quiz the questions were set by 11-year-old Josh McLean whose dad Nathan made a special donation to the hospice.

Nathan said: “Josh has been putting questions together for online quizzes in our area of Bacup. We are all big Jordan North fan so we approached Pendleside to see if Josh could prepare the questions and they said yes!”

Pendleside’s latest ambassador Barrowford professional entertainer Josh Hindle staged a three-day virtual music festival in May and provided the live stream entertainment for the Fence Pendleside Group’s VE Day Stay At Home party.

Josh has now raised more than £25,000 for the hospice in recent years and he is already planning more future events.