News / Striptease helps raise over £14,000 for MS charity
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A SELLOUT concert featuring feel-good music, a seven-man strip tease and a public waxing raised a phenomenal £14,648 for Shetland’s multiple sclerosis (MS) society on Saturday night.
Organiser Amy Uren said she was “delighted” to have raised such a large sum, much higher than the £10,000 she had been targeting, and thanked everyone for their remarkable generosity.
The concert at Mareel featured a set from visiting ska band Bombskare, alongside local party favourites The Revellers and singer-songwriter Toni Sidgwick.
For many the highlight was when seven local men – Amy’s husband Wayne Uren, Jamie Sim, Stevie Coutts, Karl Batty, Samuel Scott, Stephen Glaister and Christopher Irvine – performed a (partial) strip tease under the group name Different Strokes.
There was also a charity wax and raffle on a night entitled Strip MS: Helping to Strip Away the Problems of Living with MS.
“When I found out it was a sell-out I was delighted,” Uren said. “It made my day. The waxers took in quite a lot of sponsor money as well – they all handled it really well too.”
She said the night couldn’t have happened without the help of a long list of people, including the bands and other performers, the Different Strokes strippers, Davie Gardner for “helping to keep me right” on the music side of things, and Rhianne Johnston for teaching the strippers how to dance.
“All the local businesses who donated sponsor money too, because none of it would have happened without them,” Uren said. “And my friends – Ashleigh Farquhar, Louise Mouat and Rachel Ross-Smith, they’ve helped right from the start, and we’ve been organising it for over a year.”
She added: “We have all done an amazing thing for charity. I’m so glad so many people came to help us raise funds for the MS Society Shetland.”
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