Pub girls have bared all for a nude calendar to raise money for EllenorLions Hospices. They spoke to reporter DAVID MILLS about stripping off for a good cause.
REGULARS at the Millers Cottage in Gravesend are in for a treat.
Brave women staff at the pub in Shrubbery Road have taken their clothes off for the camera and posed for a calendar.
Inspired by the 2003 film Calendar Girls, the 11 girls each have their own month where they appear naked, but not all of them were so keen at first.
Landlady Glynis Kean said: “When I approached the staff about doing a Calendar Girls’ style 2010 calendar I got a mixed reaction of ‘Oh yes that will be great!’ to ‘Oh no I don’t think I could do that!’
“The less enthusiastic got over their fears once I assured them it would be tastefully done and their pride would be intact.
Staff at the pub are no strangers to fundraising.
Two years ago landlord Bob Savage was blindfolded and soaked with buckets of beans and last year Glynis’s “extremely hairy” son Ross did a sponsored wax.
Each month of the calendar has been sponsored by a different company raising a total of £1,200.
Previous fundraising events along with calendar sales so far have raised more than £4,500.
Glynis, 55, said: “This year the pressure was on myself. I was racking my brains as to what to do.
“Customers were saying I should do a bungee jump but I’m not the sort of person to do that.
“The calendar idea is a little bit saucy and risque but it’s been done for the right reasons.”
Calendars cost £5 each and can be bought by calling the pub on 01474 358354 or by dropping in.
MISS FEBRUARY
Breast cancer survivor Vivienne Mew, aged 41, is Miss February.
The mother-of-one, of Windmill Hill, Gravesend, spent three-and-a-half-years fighting her illness and went through several rounds of chemo and radiotherapy.
Viv, who now hopes to relaunch her career as a beauty therapist, has had a mastectomy and a reconstruction bringing muscle from her back round to her front.
She said of the cause she was raising money for: “It’s a matter close to my heart.
“Not everyone is as fortunate as me to come through the other side of it and still be there. I thank God every day.
“Doing this calendar has helped me get my confidence back.”
MISS NOVEMBER
Chef Lorna Clarke, who is Miss November, was only too happy to get her kit off for the camera.
The 44-year-old, of Rochester Road, Gravesend, volunteers one morning a week at EllenorLions doing mini manicures.
The charity provides care for people with life-threatening illnesses.
Mother-of-one Lorna said: “Something as simple as having their nails painted makes people in the hospice feel so much better.
“The care they receive from the volunteers there is really beneficial to them.
“If we can do anything to help even if it pays someone’s wages for a day, then that gives people the care and dignity they want.”
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