The lovely Gwen Reid kicks off the year.

And let’s faces it – thirty-one days is never going to be enough.  After all, this is a picture we could never ‘tyre’ of!

Little Idris Owen arrived at 8am this morning, weighing-in at eight pounds, nine ounces.

Photos will no doubt follow.

You can apparently listen freely to Neil Sedaka’s Calendar Girl video  on YouTube but they want to
charge us £100 to have the track accompany a slide show of our calendar girls!
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I’ve been holding back on putting a slide-show of all the calendar pictures on the website because I thought it would be nice to set it to Neil Sedaka’s classic track  “I love, I love, I love my Calendar Girl…”

So I wrote to his management company in New York and asked them to pass on the request.  They replied that “all requests must be directed to EMI Music Publishing UK”.

And so I wrote to them, explaining that we wanted to have the track accompany the slide show and that it was to promote a non-profit project raising money for a local charity.

They replied:

“Due to company policy we are unable to offer a gratis licence, but I can licence on a nominal fee basis. Please note that this quote is still subject to writer/ management approval which I will seek should you wish to proceed with the request.

For a 12 month exhibition (public performance of the promo video) for £100″

£100!! -  Nominal Fee!! – Erm… Wake up and smell the coffee EMI.  This is for CHARITY!! And in comparison to the EMI empire a very very small concern indeed.

Needless to say we won’t be taking them up on their “kind” offer.  I’ll source some nice royalty-free background music instead!

I’ll bet Mr Sedaka himself wouldn’t have thought twice about waiving his “nominal” fee and would have been pleased his song was helping a worthy cause.

I must admit it was with some trepidation I picked up a copy this morning.  I know what the national tabloids can be like and was expecting smut and immuendo.

But in fairness, the newspaper that revels in smutty revelations gave the calendar a really nice write-up and almost a whole page – pushing Mel Gibson onto the sidelines!

That can only do good things for sales of the calendar and swell the coffers for Ty Croeso.

Well done everybody!

Because we regularly update our various websites I tend to keep an eye on our position for popular keywords and phrases.

As you would expect, typing in “Classy Cobs Calendar” results in the number one position which helps when someone wants to find ths specific web site but doesn’t know the URL.

It is when you broaden the search, however, that you realise how important good Google rankings are in bringing people to the website who didn’t even know this particular calendar existed!

Today, for instance, anyone searching for “Charity Calendars” on Google.co.uk would find our longer established 2009 Beauty and the Beast calendar in the number two position and the fledgling 2010 Classy Cobs at a very respectable number seven.

Interestingly, when I changed the search term to “2010 naked charity calendar” we were at number eight on the first page whilst occupying the number one position was the Classy Cobs Charity Calendar Facebook Page!

All grist to the mill and wonderful for publicity.

Need a web site for your business or organisation?  Talk to Chris Birchall and find out about our photography/copy-writing/web-design packages.
01824 704844

That is just the most incredible amount to have raised by midnight on Calendar Launch Night!

The printing is paid for and virtually all other expenses were covered by donations – so that is the amount the charity would get if we didn’t sell another single calendar!!

It is, of course, only the start – and it is a figure that I feel we can easily double. Certainly, sufficient copies of the calendar have been printed to reach at least that amount.  So everybody involved will be working hard to sell as many calendars as they can to friends, neighbours and work colleagues.

Stocks of the calendars will be going out to the shop in the coming week.  If you would like to add your shop/cafe/garage to the list, get in touch via the Contacts Page or by using the comments section at the bottom of the page.

(Total amount raised includes cheques made out to Ty Croeso that have been or will be handed over to the charity in advance of the main fund)

Yes the Proofs are back from the printers

The presses are rolling as we speak churning out the BEST 2010 Charity Calendar ready for launch night – this Saturday (24th October)

All tickets for this star-studded evening are now sold out but you can order your copy of the calendar on-line through this website or at one of the outlets listed on the Buy it Now page