10th April 1995
The Messiah at Euston
The next time we were allowed out was on the concourse of Euston Station on the Monday before Easter with a full length, unrehearsed performance of Messiah. In a little over three hours our buckets and boxes were filled with over £1200 for the Malcom Sargent Cancer Fund for Children.
This large scale busking reached the ears of one of the main London Independent Radio Stations who interviewed the Conductor no less than twice in the 24 hours before the performance. Publicity surrounded us on the day itself. Thames Television turned up to include us in one of the last news bulletins they broadcast to London before that went to Carlton. BBC Radio 5 Live also came - we still haven't worked out what sports event they were intending to cover, but as they were there and nothing else seemed to be happening, they included us in the five o'clock news. The conductor has still not worked out why he bewildered one of the production staff of one of these organisations when he said he wouldn't move Hallelujah to fit in with the broadcast schedule because it wasn't what the composer wanted - and no, they couldn't telephone the composer to get his permission. As well as the contributions to their coffers, the Malcolm Sargent Cancer Fund for Children (now renamed Sargent Cancer Care) was able to use the publicity to make themselves known to a much wider audience.