‘Cash in the Attic’
Having seen the BBC programme ‘Cash in the Attic’, Jan thought that she would apply and capitalise on an extraordinary opportunity to tell the Flame International story to the nation! Her idea was to sell some of her mother’s treasures (with her permission of course!) in aid of the Kenya & Burundi trip in 2005. The application was successful and on Monday 28 February 2005 the crew arrived bright and early at the house and headed off to Sandhurst to record an introduction for the programme. The crew included the presenter, Ben Fogel, Jonty Hearnden the resident expert and researcher Marcus English.
The Rummage
After the shoot at Sandhurst, in beautiful sunshine, we rushed back to
the house as we had to get rummaging pretty quickly, ‘rummaging’ being
the catchphrase on Cash in the Attic! We were all invited to wander
around the house and be filmed examining the treasures we found. Anything
which seemed promising was taken by Jonty, who then interviewed either
Jan or her mum with the piece at least 5 times! We soon became familiar
with phrases such as ’picking up’, ‘velcroing in’ and
taking the ‘noddy shots’; the latter proving quite difficult
as they were filmed as though you were listening to the expert describing
a piece, and nodding at the same time! Later we ‘rummaged’ around
the garage and filming finally ended for the day at 7pm.
The Auction
The auction took place at Wellers Auctioneers in Chertsey on Saturday
19 March, 2005. Jan and her mum met the crew, who had got there early
for some filming before the auction began. Jonty was not particularly optimistic
about our chances to raise the money we had hoped for as we had put high
reserve prices on some of the items. However the Lord worked a couple of
miracles and we even made our target by the end of the first lot! The
other lots also went spectacularly well for Flame, with a Chinese jug that
had been bought for the bargain price 50p selling for £250!
The programme was aired on Thursday 16th June, and repeated in October
2006, and we are so thankful to the Lord for this amazing opportunity to
reach a huge audience with the testimony of Flame International. We
pray that the film crew and those watching will be touched by stories of
what the Lord can do, that His name will be spread abroad to homes and
places where we could not ourselves go and that “they will see the
glory of the Lord, the splendour of our God”.