Quilters Junior School Rotakids do it again. A series of "hat events" on a Mad Hatters" day raised £502.46 (including a contribution from The Rotary Club of Billericay) in 24 packed hours for Brain Tumour Research.  Well done RotaKids!

Only 1% of all cancer donations go to research into preventing brain tumours and the charity promotes holding "hat events" to remind people of the urgent need to eradicate and prevent this deadliest type of cancer.

What did they do? Firstly, there was an "I can’t take my hat off" challenge – to wear a hat continuously for 24 hours from noon May 20th until lunch on May 21st. Quite a challenge! But the children were up to it. One girl said "I wore a hat all the time, even in the hot-tub!"

At the end of the twenty four hours, no school lunch but instead a Mad Hatters Tea-Party and, after that, a "make a hat in 60 minutes " competition and a "hat parade" - best hat won as pupils went to "Pick of the Week". And charity funds were boosted by official hat badges and pins on sale over the two days. Each pupil donated £1.00 to take part – all great fun.

The planned "Beat the Goalie Challenge" had to be postponed.  Why?

Because the children were very excited by two surprise visitors. Both Lauren Platt who achieved fame last year as a finalist in the X-Factor TV show and Lewis Platt who is part of the "Entity Allstars" dance group presently appearing on Britain’s Got Talent, dropped in to see the schoolchildren. Lewis was previously a pupil at the school.

They went round all the classes to meet the children and went to the school radio station Quilters FM, to be interviewed by the RotaKids children. A series of children interviewed Lewis first with questions about when he was at Quilters and his experiences on Britain’s Got Talent. "What was the best dance competition you’ve been in", they asked. "It must be Britain’s Got Talent" was the reply. They even asked what was the most annoying thing that Lewis found about his sister, and that was …. Well that’s a story for another day!

Then the spotlight turned to Lauren who was interrogated about her time on X-factor and her plans for the future. "I first started singing at 8" she said. "Why did you enter X-Factor?" was next. "I was on Britain’s Got Talent, and I had four yesses, but I didn’t make the cut for the finals, so they rang me up and asked me if I wanted to enter X-Factor – so I did!"   When asked about her plans she talked about song writing in collaboration with others, and her new project, a blog which can be found on http://websta.me/n/laurenplattnews111