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Caithness.org News Bulletins -  October 2002
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Thurso Venue for Telephone Bidding In Highland Hospice Biggest Ever Event

STAR LOTS UP FOR GRABS AT INNOVATIVE HIGHLAND AUCTION

The Highland Hospice will stage the biggest charity event in the Highlands for many years on 2 November 2002.

In a unique multimedia event, readers of Highland News group newspapers and visitors to www.Hi-lands.com will be able to bid for all the lots two weeks in advance. The north of Scotland business journal Executive Magazine will also carry details of the lots. The highest advance bids will be carried forward to the day itself. Bidding for most lots will conclude at a public event at mid-day linking bidders in three venues by telephone - in Inverness Sports Hall, Fort William’s Safeway and Thurso’s Boys Brigade Hall. In the evening bidding for a few high value lots will conclude at a special £50-a-head dinner and Highland ceilidh at the Newton Hotel in Nairn.

Around 150 lots are up for grabs including:

§ The Neva Egg designed by Sarah Faberge for The St Petersburg Collection. Sarah is the great-
     grand-daughter of Carl Faberge, the famed designer to the Tsars of Russia.

§ Dinosaur footprints from Skye, from Coelophysis, the first dinosaur found in Scotland

§ A walk-on part in TV detective series Taggart

§ A week’s hind stalking on the Duke of Westminster’s Estate in the Highlands

§ A bottle of 1924 Royal Brackla single malt whisky valued at around £2,500

§ An evening with the Hospice’s heart-throb doctor Stephen Hutchison

§ A stay at Skibo Castle (where Madonna was married), home to The Carnegie Club where stars
    like Sean Connery take their Highland breaks

§ A house plot from Tulloch plc in Inverness worth over £50,000

§ A tour of Monarch of the Glen locations in a classic car used in the hit TV series

§ A Manchester United package including a 2002 squad signed shirt and a commemorative
    medal from the 1999 Treble-winning season

§ A bedtime story read by the Provost of Inverness William Smith

§ A signed Tim Henman tennis shirt

§ A signed Olympic shirt from Scotland’s Golden Girls, the Olympic curling gold medallists

§ A one-off autographed print of Olympic skier Alain Baxter taken from his sexy bare-chested
   appearance in the ‘Highland Hunks’ calendar for the Hospice, as featured recently in many
   national tabloids

The Grand Auction has been organised with the assistance of a Steering Group of business leaders and in partnership with Grampian Television and Highland News.

The Auction will raise funds for an appeal to bring a second Consultant doctor to the Highland Hospice - the only Hospice in the Highlands of Scotland.

Martin Edwards, Fundraising & Finance Director of the Hospice, said:
“We are aiming to raise £120,000 for the appeal from this unique event involving newspapers, TV, the internet and four venues. We are delighted with the extraordinary range of auction lots that have been donated and hope they will persuade the public to get behind this appeal, which will be one of the most important developments in care for people in the Highlands for many years.”

Each year the Highland Hospice cares for more and more people in the Highlands who have an incurable illness. The Hospice provides ten in-patient beds; a day centre; complementary therapies to enhance the well-being of patients and their relatives; and education work to build expertise among health professionals in how to provide for people who are towards the end of their lives.

The Hospice was founded in 1988 and its new wing, providing complementary therapies and day care, was opened by HRH The Princess Royal in 1998.