Staff at an Oxenhope tea shop are featuring in a BBC programme next week as part of the launch of a new, innovative charity.
Husband and wife team Andrew and Katrina Heaton and Andrew's sister, Louise, who all work at the Drop Farm Tea Room, Moorside Lane, Oxenhope, were filmed by the BBC cameras as they joined the efforts to launch the TimeBank charity.
Katrina says: "They approached us as they were doing a programme to launch the charity where you give your time and not your money."
The BBC's new initiative, which has been showing on BBC2 for the last two weeks, runs on a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" basis. Viewers will be asked to donate their time to do a job or a chore, and then their kindness is repaid with a treat. The series of programmes featuring Katrina, Andrew and Louise is a taster to show how the charity works.
To do their bit for the charity Katrina played host to four 14-year-old Glaswegian children who had been treated to a day's paint-balling. The children's return favour was to work at the tea room for a day.
Louise says: "Their favour was to come down here for the day so that Katrina and Andrew could go out for the day."
She says they all rolled up their sleeves and got stuck in. "Everything apart from the washing up," she says.
"They were nice kids, but you could not understand what they were saying, especially when they were talking to each other," says Louise.
Andrew's treat was a long awaited day on the golf course, while Katrina went to a top class hair salon.
Andrew says: "I have always said I would have a go at golf, but I have never had the chance, so I went to the Marsden club and a professional there gave me a lesson for an hour or two.
"It was harder than it looks."
Katrina says she thoroughly enjoyed her trip to the hairdressers, despite being afraid of the result beforehand.
She says: "It has been the same style for 15 years and I have not had the courage to have it cut, so I went to see a man called Paul Smith, at Barrowford, who has been trained by Andrew Collinge. It was just like going into a London salon."
Having had their treats, Katrina and Andrew had to carry out their favour, which involved a phone call from celebrity cook Clarissa Dickson-Wright, of Two Fat Ladies fame.
"We then got a phone call from Clarissa Dickson-Wright asking if we could find a recipe for pickled tripe. We went to Keighley reference library to look in their old books and we found about 50 recipes, but no pickled tripe."
She says they finally managed to track down the recipe at the Murton Park farming museum in York after buying the tripe at Burnley market.
To complete the circle of tit-for-tat favours, Clarissa Dickson-Wright will cook the pickled tripe for a fire crew who were involved in the very first favour and treat.
Katrina says: "It was an experience for us, as living up here we do not get out very often, and to see what actually goes into making the programme was fascinating. "We really enjoyed it."
The Timebank programmes featuring the Oxenhope tea room is on tomorrow at 5.40pm, on BBC2, and on Monday, March 20, at 9.50pm on BBC2.
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