#edfringe

On Wednesday 15^th August I went to Edinburgh to see Lost Voice Guy at the Fringe. We went shopping in Edinburgh for the day before heading to the City Cafe to the comedy gig. I had my tickets booked for a while and was looking forward to seeing Lost Voice Guy again.

Adam Larter opened the night and introduced the first comedian Jeff Lantern - who was hilarious! I had not heard of Jeff Lantern before the gig but he was so brilliant that I would definitely like to see him again!

Jeff Lantern

Patrick Monahan was the MC and he came on before Lost Voice Guy. Lee’s mother was sat in front of us and Pat said as it was her first time at the fringe she had to crowd surf. He then spent a hilarious 5 minutes preparing this for a photo opportunity (with my camera!).

Crowd Surfing



Patrick Monahan

Lost Voice Guy then came on and was as brilliant as ever. The whole room were laughing out loud from start to finish.



Lost Voice Guy

At the end of the gig I got a photo of me with Lost Voice Guy and then with Patrick Monahan. I had a nice chat with Pat and gave him a new Giving Voice pen (which he used to sign his autograph!). My mam and I were wearing out Giving Voice badges and I told Patrick about the campaign and he said he liked our badges! J

Lost Voice Guy and me

My mam, Patrick Monahan and me (wearing our GV badges!)

I was excited to find that Paula Lane (actress – Kylie Platt from Coronation Street) retweeted my blog to more than 49,000 followers earlier this week. I tweeted Paula Lane as she is running the Great North Run and the blog entry she shared was about the Jelly Babies I will be giving out on the day. I will be updating my blog soon to share more information about what I will be doing at the GNR and will tweet this to everyone I know who is running this year, to hopefully spread the word a little bit further J

Retweet from Paula Lane

Speech and Language Therapy Transforms Lives



Lost Voice Guy Headlines Again!

I was pleased to see a short piece printed in the News Post Leader this week about Lost Voice Guy at Ashington Football Club. This is also available online with a photo of Lost Voice Guy (see here). I’m looking forward to seeing Lost Voice Guy at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh on Wednesday with Patrick Monahan as the MC J I’ll be taking some Giving Voice leaflets and pens  just in case there’s anyone I can give them to!

It’s just 5 weeks until the Great North Run and we’ve been buying Jelly Babies ready to give out to the runners on the day, (around the 11 mile mark). I will be going along wearing my Giving Voice t-shirt again like last year and we’ll also be giving out oranges. My sister wrote to South Shields and Boldon Asda’s to ask if they would donate any oranges for us to give out, but so far she hasn’t heard back. Check out my blog entry from the GNR last year (here)

The Jelly Babies we've bought so far :-)

My brother-in-law is running the GNR for NETA (North East Trust for Aphasia) and I’ll be there cheering him on. If you’d like to sponsor him you can do so here.

Speech and Language Therapy Transforms Lives

Bitz and Bobz

It’s a year this month since I started this blog and how the time has flown! It’s brilliant that the page views have exceeded 6000 in just under a year! This blog entry contains a few 'Bitz and Bobz' as it’s a little while since I’ve had the chance to sit down and update it!

My mam has been tweeting my blog to lots of celebrities and we were delighted that Jill Halfpenny recently retweeted it to over 13,000 followers!!

Jill Halfpenny retweet

I’ve been really busy over the last few weeks organising an Entertainment Evening to raise awareness of Giving Voice and to raise some money for the North East Trust for Aphasia (www.neta.org.uk). I am very excited that we have been able to book Lost Voice Guy to be the star of the evening! (www.lostvoiceguy.com) The evening will start with some comedy, followed by a fun pub quiz (with a cash prize!) and there will be other activities on throughout the evening. The event is taking place at Ashington Football Club on Thursday 2^nd August 7.30pm-10.30pm. If you are in the area and would like to come along please contact me for tickets (advance booking required). Tickets are £5 and this also gets you FREE entry into our pub quiz!! The facebook event can be found here for further information http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/228609873926723/  

Wayne Madden (of YRadio) is our MC and quizmaster for the evening! He is also going to interview me ahead of the event for YRadio!! www.yradio.co.uk – I’ll share the interview on here once it goes online!

I wrote to Ian Lavery MP to invite him to the event but unfortunately he is unable to attend as he is on holiday at the time. I have also written to some of the Executive Council members who I thought might be interested, and I am currently awaiting a reply from them. I am going to contact local newspapers too so hopefully we’ll get some media coverage! Watch this space!

On another note about NETA, my fabulous brother-in-law is running the Great North Run for them again this year! I will be there on the side lines at the 11 mile mark to support him (wearing my Giving Voice t-shirt, armed with oranges and jelly babies once again!) I am also hoping I might get to see Patrick Monahan (and get another one of his famous hugs?!) as he is running the GNR too.  If you would like to you can sponsor my brother-in-law at www.justgiving.com/CraigSeagoGNR

If you would like tickets to the Entertainment Evening in Ashington please contact me as soon as possible (through facebook, twitter (Pinkjules_16) or email julieanne.carr1@hotmail.co.uk) A night not to be missed!

Speech and Language Therapy Transforms Lives



Everybody Loves Pens

I was delighted to see that Ian Lavery, MP retweeted my blog and this also led to some other people retweeting it too.  I’m happy to see that my blog is steadily making its ways towards 6000 page views! It means a lot that people are interested in reading it.

Last Monday I went to see Patrick Monahan (Winner of ITV1's 'Show Me The Funny') and Lost Voice Guy at Hoochie Coochie in Newcastle. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to speak to both of them on the night. It was nice to catch up with Lost Voice Guy and I even got a photo with him! It was good to hear about all the gigs he’s been doing and how surreal he is still finding it all. He had some new material on the night and the audience loved him!

Me with Lost Voice Guy!

There were some other great comedians on the night too: Simon Donald (from The Viz), Abi Roberts and Ben Messenger.

It was also great to meet Patrick Monahan and I took the opportunity to thank him for retweeting my blog. He said it was his pleasure and I got a hug (sadly I wasn’t quick enough for a photo opportunity!) I gave him a Giving Voice pen with which he seemed delighted! It appears that Everybody Loves Pens! Patrick’s stand up was really good and I tweeted him to tell him this. I was delighted that he replied to my tweet and I look forward to seeing him again in the future.

Patrick Monahan on stage

Speech and Language Therapy Transforms Lives

5000 and beyond...

I’m very excited that my blog has exceeded 5000 pages views! It’s great that lots of people are reading and sharing it, to spread the message that Speech and Language Therapy Transforms Lives. Hopefully won’t be too long before it reaches 6000.

I was really excited to get my blog re-tweeted by Patrick Monahan (7701 followers)and Lost Voice Guy (1166 followers) help me reach 5000 views! Thank you to everyone else who shared it too! J

The Stroke Association are having a family fun day at Saltwell Park, Gateshead tomorrow ( Saturday 26^th May, 10-2pm) and I got permission yesterday to go along and hand out Giving Voice leaflets. If you are in the area why not come along and say hello? Hopefully the weather will be as nice as it is today! I’ll blog again after the event J

Here’s a link to their website if you want to have a look at the event! http://www.stroke.org.uk/event/step-out-saltwell-park-gateshead

Speech and Language Therapy Transforms Lives!