BIG-hearted Barrovians had given more than £20,000 to the BBC ‘Children in Need’ Appeal within days of the big day in 1990.

The fun started at 7pm on Friday, November 23 and lasted right through until the early hours on Saturday as Radio Furness was buzzing with pledges from the county and from the rest of the country.

An outside unit in Millom made £5,885, and money was still to come in from Kendal.

Station production assistant Anne Hopper said she was hopeful the station would beat the previous year’s figure of £35,000.

‘Loads of people’ visited them, including Barrow and Furness MP Cecil Franks.

The station had calls from around the country. “We were getting calls from Cheshire and the South,” she said.

She thought the calls were due to people working down a list of numbers in Radio Times until they got through.

“The Evening Mail telesales team were tremendous. It would have been difficult to manage without them.” The Mail team had manned the telephones to make pledges.

Among the donations collected were £1,500 from a three-legged pub crawl by Barrow Town Hall staff; Furness Lions bringing in £1,153.71; VSEL traffic raising £1,300; Barrow Indoor Market £1,500; Lindale Pigeon Club £1,047; and staff of the Travellers Rest giving their £33.72 tips.

Barrow girl Joanne Welsh, 10 went to school as a St Trinian’s pupil, betting no-one would notice and raised £30.

Carly Turner, 10, of Millom, raised £8.49 for being quiet for three hours.

Employees from Cumbria County Council took annual leave on the Friday to redecorate a classroom at Newton School, Carlisle.

Fancy dress workers from Barrow's Careful Cleaning Contractors paid tribute to staff at Wainhomes on Rating Lane, Lakeland Motors and building workers in Oxford Street, who helped them collect £90 in under an hour for the appeal.

Overall, £89,772 was raised in Cumbria on the Friday. The figure on Monday November 26 stood at £96,000, a slight increase on the previous year.