Tag Archives: esther rantzen

Nicole Scherzinger And Natasha Bedingfield Rock the Roundhouse

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Who: Nicole Scherzinger, Natasha Bedingfield, Lizzie Cundy, journalist and television presenter Esther Rantzen, Hofit Golan, Britain’s first female fast jet pilot Jo Salter, Molly Bedingfield

 

What: Annual Global Angels Charity Awards including ‘An evening with Natasha Bedingfield & Friends’ Concert & VIP After Party

 

When: Friday 15th November 2012

 

Where: The Roundhouse, London

 

Dress Code: Cocktail with a touch of gold

 

What they Ate:

Starters
Marinated vine tomatoes with ricotta, crispy basil, aged balsamic vinegar and croutes

Main Course
Lamb shank with Jerusalem artichoke puree, Winter greens and chanternay carrots

Desserts
Sharp lemon posset and blackcurrent mousse with a lavender and lemon shortbread

 

What they Drank:

Sauvignon Blanc 2012 – Alianza Estate, Tempranillo Malbec 2012 – Fuzion Estate. `

 

X Factor judge Nicole Scherzinger and Grammy and Brit nominated singer Natasha Bedingfield performed together last night at the Roundhouse for an inspirational evening celebrating the 2013 annual Global Angels Awards, paying tribute to outstanding individuals and philanthropic businesses who have contributed to the Global Angels vision.

 

The star studded event, hosted by Vietnam’s Next Top Model Judge, international model Ha Anh Vu, and Russ Kane, Capital Radio’s Eye in the Sky, included a glamorous cocktail reception, three course meal, charity auction with all proceeds going directly to The Global Angels Foundation, and climaxed in an Angels in Concert spectacular with Natasha Bedingfield performing with her good friend Nicole Scherzinger.

 

Lighting and set designers, Simon Deary (LED Poison – X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, 2011 Take That Tour) and Jonathan Park (Pink Floyd, The Wall, Thriller) crafted a visual spectacle which kept the crowds captivated throughout the evening.

 

The two hour after-party featured KRYSTALROXX Live, DJ Ashley Beedle, Sugababe Amelle & singer/songwriter Raphaella, which took the celebrations into the early hours.

 

South West Hair Loss Salon provides help for women like Nadine Dorries and Esther Rantzen

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South West “Hair Loss” Salon provides help for women like Nadine Dorries and Esther Rantzen who have spoken out about hair loss and thin hair

With celebrities like Esther Rantzen and MP Nadine Dorries highlighting the problems of thin hair and hair loss, more women are seeking out the services of Simone Thomas from Make-up, Wigs and Hair (MWAH) in Bournemouth.

This week Conservative MP and “I’m a Celebrity Get Me out of Here” contestant Nadine Dorries revealed her own hair loss brought on by a stressful year and her reaction to it. She called the condition a “confidence stealer,” likening it to when women have a mastectomy.

She said: “You’re losing your confidence and you’re losing your ability to go out and actually face the world because you think what identifies a woman are her hair and her breasts.”

Her announcement comes after Esther Rantzen revealed that she has worn a wig for over 30 years because of her own thin hair, but criticised the quality and staying powers of her own wigs.

[image]Simone Thomas who runs MWAH Bournemouth knows exactly how both these celebrities feel as she lost her own hair twice as a result of alopecia and then cervical cancer. Having worked in TV, Film and Magazine Modelling since the age of 18 Simone was forced to look for ways to cover up her hair loss, but found there was little on the market except for cheap and nasty looking wigs.

After taking several courses in Specialist Hair Extensions & Hair Loss Systems Simone set up a business that provides professional makeup services, hair extensions and hair loss systems to clients all over the UK and Europe. She sources the best products and systems and has a range of clientele that includes celebrities, TV companies, photographers and agents.

Simone has recently moved to Dorset from London and has opened her first all encompassing salon in Bournemouth called MWAH Bournemouth – Makeup, Wigs & Hair. Through her research she found there was nowhere in the South that catered for women who have suffered with hair loss from cancer treatment, thinning hair, premature fine hair, receding hair loss, female pattern hair loss, alopecia, trichotillomania, temporary hair loss or women who want thicker longer hair through safe hair extensions that are glue and adhesive free. With over 3 million dying from breast cancer in the region she identified a real need.

Simone says, “At my salon we don’t just find a solution to the hair loss or thinning but try to help with the underlying causes where we can, sometimes referring the client to a therapist and of course making sure that our products are free from any parabens that are linked to cancer.”

Hair loss is always going to be traumatic for the person involved, but as Nadine Dorries says, there is help available for both men and women who suffer from conditions like alopecia and temporary hair loss. MWAH Bournemouth means that there is now an expert service in the South West to help anyone who suffers from this condition.

Further information from www.mwahbournemouth.co.uk or email: mwahbournemouth@gmail.com or tel: 01202 760 003.

ChildLine, 25 YEARS OLD!

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Esther Rantzen writes for yano on the launch of ChildLine and the way it has been at the forefront of pioneering the plight of children, who are in danger in their own homes.

Times have changed so much. Back in 1986, soon after ChildLine was launched, one broadsheet newspaper called ChildLine “the phone line that encourages children to sneak on their parents”! As if ChildLine was a threat to good parents and happy family life. As if children were being encouraged to inform on their parents, like those in Mao’s China. When in fact over the last 25 years we have learned that even given the safety of a confidential phone-line, children will go to great lengths to protect their families. As one child who contacted ChildLine because she was terrified that she was pregnant by her father said, “It was my job to suffer.”

But 25 years ago was a very different time. Then most people had no idea that some children could be suffering terrible abuse or neglect behind the net curtains in perfectly respectable homes. When, in October 1986 we revealed that fact in a special programme called Childwatch which launched ChildLine, it was such a painful message that the temptation was to blame the messenger – a tabloid newspaper labelled our programme “the most dangerous show on television”.

I believed then, and believe now, that the only way to tackle a problem is to admit it exists, and try to resolve it. On that first night, when we opened our phone lines ChildLine received 50,000 attempted phone calls. Buoyed up by the children’s faith in us, and by the fact we knew from the start we were saving lives and preventing abuse, we continued to publicise ChildLine’s work and the Freephone number 0800 1111, and to expand and develop as fast as we could. Now 25 years later we have 12 bases around the country, have created on-line counselling services, and, wonderful news, at last we are meeting the huge demand from children. At last we can now answer every single child who needs us.

Over the last 25 years we have helped almost 2.7 million children, and have tracked huge changes in young people’s lives. Back then, for many children the only way to contact ChildLine safely was to run to a phone box. Some put their lives at risk, escaping from their homes in the middle of the night to ring us. And because so many thousands tried to get through, and we simply hadn’t enough money, or volunteer counsellors, or phone lines to answer them all, many of them failed to get through. When they did, I remember speaking to children who described abuse that had been going on for ten or fifteen years – as long as they could remember. Now, the good news is that half the sexually abused children who contact ChildLine do so within a month of it starting. And it seems from our statistics that sexual and physical abuses are happening less often. I believe ChildLine has played its part as a deterrent. Abusers know now that abused children can ask for help.

Mobile phones have been a crucial liberation for children. Now they can ring us from anywhere, at any time. So has the internet. There are some problems, like self-harm, or depression, which so destroy a child’s self confidence that they dare not attempt to talk about them. So they contact us on-line instead – and our counsellors have developed the skills to counsel them effectively via the internet. Now sexual abuse has been replaced as the most common problem, it is still in the top five, but at the very top of the list now are serious family problems. This makes us at ChildLine wonder what has happened to our family life that causes so many children so much unhappiness? At the moment we are analysing those calls, to try and find some answers.

ChildLine has never been a threat to good parents. But it may reveal ways we can support our children and protect them from pain more effectively. It did 25 years ago. It does so still today.

Esther Rantzen Highlights International Missing Children’s Day 2012

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May 25th is International Missing Children’s Day. So where are the children and why have they gone? Esther Rantzen, founder of ChildLine opens the lid on a growing problem for the UK.

It is frightening, shocking and deeply disturbing that even in these enlightened days, even in this civilized country, thousands of children can become invisible. And their invisibility can put them into the gravest danger. We have seen cases that have made headlines recently as the evidence was revealed in court of children being plied with drugs and alcohol and then used as sex slaves. This has happened, not in the back streets of third world slums where these children were be living in rubbish dumps or starving. It happened to ordinary children living in our own towns and cities.. The new website for fresh thinking on parenting.

How is it that children like these suffer such a terrible fate? The cloak of invisibility that surrounds them seems to have been fashioned out of adult indifference. They ‘bunk off’ school and nobody notices. They run away from care and no one can restrain them. They sleep rough and nobody seems to take responsibility for them, or ask questions, or even search for them and find a safe refuge for them.

We sometimes hear from these children at ChildLine. One girl I know well ran away when she was eleven from her mother’s alcoholism and violence. She stayed on a bus until it was dark and she had run out of money, and then rang ChildLine, the children’s helpline. The first time she, and we were lucky, we found a bed for her in the only children’s refuge in London. The next day she was placed in foster care, but when that placement broke down, she ran away again and rang ChildLine once more.

This time we were not so lucky and were not able to locate a place for her, so she promised she would go home. In fact she slept in a local park overnight. I dread to think what could have happened to her. Happily she survived, rang ChildLine in the morning, and from then on was looked after. Although there were other crises in her life, each time she rang our helpline we were able to empower her and inspire her to move forward. Now she is married, with children of her own and has a thriving career working for a children’s charity. She is a wonderful success story, but how many others end up in our prisons, or addiction units, or dying in A & E with no one to mourn their passing?

It is estimated that 100,000 children run away from their homes, or from care each year in the UK – but nobody really knows the true figure. Railway Children is one of the most effective charities which supports children living on the streets, the children most of us pass by without a glance in their direction. According to Railway Children, two-thirds of runaways will be victims of violence on the streets and few are reported missing by their parents or carers in the first place. It’s not enough to suggest that the police should pick them up and return them home.

When a child runs away there can be a very good reason. And yet they may be too ashamed or fearful to tell the police what that reason is. And what happens if they do tell? One of the most appalling aspects of the recent case of teenage girls abused by gangs of predatory men is that when one did ask for help, and reported the abuse, she was not believed.

It is clear that we urgently need to open our eyes and ears. We need to see and hear the children before the moment when their desperation forces them onto the streets. Many of these children know what they are running from but have no idea what perils they are running towards.

I talked to a girl who was running away to Piccadilly but paused to ring ChildLine. She was in floods of tears so she could hardly find the words to explain what had driven her from home. Eventually she explained that she had just discovered her own adoption papers. Her parents had never revealed to her that she had been adopted. “I realise now that they could never have loved me,” she said. “They never told me the truth.” As I asked more questions she painted a picture of parents who deeply cared about her. I suggested to her idea that parents can make mistakes and that sometimes children need to forgive them. She said she had run away before and met a man who offered to let her work for him in Piccadilly, but another girl had warned her to go home. At the end of our conversation she said she would return home and talk to her mother about the adoption that they had never discussed before. I will never know if she went back. I pray that she did. Otherwise she might have ended up like so many of our invisible children, believing no one knew or cared how she lived or if she lived at all.

If you would like more information about these charities or want to get involved visit www.childline.org.uk or call 0800 1111. www.railwaychildren.org.uk or call 01270 757596.

This feature was written and commissioned for www.yano.co.uk

X Factor ChildLine Ball

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The recent X Factor ChildLine Ball at the Savoy raised more than £600,000.

Presenter and writer Esther Rantzen said: “It was a fantastic evening, a really thrilling way for ChildLine to celebrate this very important year, its 25th. Dermot O’ Leary was his usual charming self. Mary Byrne and Rebecca Ferguson were wonderful as they always are. And we raised a staggering amount of money, thanks to Johnny Gould and Peter Dickson. This means we can answer all the desperate children who ring ChildLine and contact us online, giving them hope, advice, and a lifeline.

“Today is also the publication date of my book Running Out Of Tears; telling the story of young adults who rang ChildLine when they were children, and how those phone calls transformed their lives. SO this is a landmark year in ChildLine’s life and in mine.”