Yesterday we launched our Big Fat Secret Santa appeal with the wonderful guys and girls at NewsThump, Southend News Network and Angry People in Local Papers to buy presents for children living in poverty and care.

In the first 24 hours of the appeal you guys have bought children 1,024 presents worth more than £7,780!

These are the children who have fled domestic violence with their mothers and are living in women’s refuges, these are the children of families in poverty, homeless children, children in care, children waiting to be adopted and children who are acting as carers for their sick parents.

Rochdale Council’s staff charity, Giving Back distributed 1,200 gifts to children in the city last Christmas but hundreds still went without. The same story is true in Reading and Southend. We want to buy 10,000 presents for these children around the country by Christmas.

Helping us help these kids could not be easier.

Visit out our Amazon Wish List by clicking the following link The Big Fat Secret Santa.

Choose a gift that suits your budget.

Choose the delivery address which is currently Helen Leach, The Giving Back Toy Appeal.

Buy it and that’s it.

The gift will be shipped directly to a toy appeal where it will be sorted by volunteers and will make it into the hands of a child on Christmas Morning.

It really couldn’t be easier, what are you waiting for? Please if you can go there now and buy a present. Buy ten if you can afford to and if you can’t spread the word for us. Everybody has the power to do something to spread some festive cheer to those who need it most.

And when you’ve done that, share this post and ask your friends to do the same.

Merry Christmas, happy shopping and thank you, thank you, thank you!

Quentin D Fortesqueue is a founding editor of The Rochdale Herald. Part time amateur narcissist and full time satirist Quentin is never happier than when playing his lute and drinking a full bodied Bordeaux. He rarely plays the lute and never gets to drink Bordeaux.