How often does a priest finish off proceedings with a performance of rock band The Who’s Pinball Wizard?
That was just one of the amazing happenings at the lively concert last Saturday at St Nicholas Church, Hurst, when Twyford-based band The Walnuts came back for its third performance.
Associate priest, the Rev Graham Theobald, thanked the band for its great night raising funds for the church and for Alzheimer’s Research UK.
He then promptly offered to round things off with a song,
The band’s concert had the audience dancing in the aisles, on the pews and reaching between their legs to find hidden, prize-bearing, nuts.
Guitarist Davie McGirr rushed round the church collecting hundreds of plastic balls being hurled into his giant net.
They’d been ‘bought’ by as an extreme type of raffle ticket to win prizes.
The Walnuts’ new drummer, Stu Roberts of Wargrave, played and local singer Hannah Guile joined in.
The audience, bearing their drinks, had been led from The Castle Inn by the band’s bagpipe player, Fergus Muirhead, and fiddle player Donald Stewart.
Davie thanked everyone, including churchwarden Sue Payne, and many others from the church, the St Nicholas bellringers who rang before the concert, The Castle Inn landlord Matt Brown and the sound team.
Sue said: “It was another fabulous evening. They bring the church and Hurst alive. We’ve already agreed with them to come next year.”
Davie has raised around £40,000 for dementia charities on his own, with Walnuts guitarist and television presenter Matt Allwright, and with all The Walnuts.
More than £20,000 of the total was for Alzheimer’s Research UK.
Among the audience of 160 people was the charity’s chief scientific officer Emma Read.
