Dumbarton & Vale of Leven Reporter | News | Dumbarton pupil's meet with Big Bro star

Thursday, 20th November, 2008

Published: Tuesday, 30th September, 2008 09:30

Dumbarton pupil's meet with Big Bro star

By Mike Farrell

A COUPLE of lucky pupils got the chance to chat with Scotland’s newest reality TV star as part of a magazine with a difference.

The two girls from Dumbarton Academy got an exclusive chit-chat with Big Brother runner-up Mikey Hughes for an online newspaper for blind people.

Nicola Dalrymple and Bethany McHard, both fifth year pupils, interviewed the blind Big Brother contestant for The Young Visually Impaired Persons magazine.

The mag is put together with the help of volunteers from Bankie Talk, a talking newspaper based in Clydebank.

Mikey’s chat lived up to their expectations, says Louise McMahon, the acting depute of the Academy, who helped the pupils organise the event.

She told the Reporter: “It was a real success, the pupils really enjoyed it.

“This has been going for the past few years, and this is the first celebrity they have managed to meet.

“They found Mikey a real character, in fact they couldn’t get him to shut up."

Dumbarton Academy pupils put the magazine together with St Columba’s High school in Clydebank.

Mikey, 33, was impressed with the pupils when he met them on Wednesday at Clydebank High.

He told the Reporter: “Before I went into the show I remember thinking that it was quite amazing that fourteen, fifteen and sixteen year-olds were taking their own time to read these stories for the blind.

“It’s really great for everyone and I just wanted to come down and say thanks to these kids for all their hard work and effort.

“I was looking forward to being grilled by these youngsters about my time in the house but I was just hoping they didn’t ask anything too embarrassing — which they didn’t.”

Frank Duffy, from Bankie Talk, added: “We decided to do an interview with Mikey after his appearance on Big Brother because he can certainly show people how to deal with blindness in a positive way.”

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