Nottinghamshire based swing singer, Ian Campbell, has taken on a mammoth year long fundraising mission, playing 366 consecutive gigs without a night off - to raise money for ‘Help for Heroes’’.
Living out of a transit van and travelling around venues across the UK since April 19th, Campbell, who calls his act ‘Frankie Martin’ and has named the mission ‘Operation Frankie’ - is set to sing every night for a whole year and-a-day to raise as money as possible for the cause.
Campbell took on the ‘Great British Pub Tour’ on coming up to his 50th Birthday, saying “As I was coming up to my 50th birthday, I thought, what have I done with my life? And I was inspired by the work of H4H, so decided to do my bit for our brave service personnel.”
The swing singer comes from a military background, his father was a RAF sergeant and Campbell states he has been brought up around the military and thinks more should be done for our injured servicemen and women.
The singer says he was only expecting to raise around £50 a night, but has been overwhelmed by the amount of support he’s gained already, and has raised nearly four times as much every night. And barely into the third month on the road, Operation Frankie has raised over £10,000 and is gathering vast amounts of attention from the press.
Entry to all of the shows is free, though collections will be taken along with H4H merchandise on offer, and a ‘Frankie Martin’ CD is available. People are also be encouraged to enter raffles for their favourite song to be played.
The shows will end in the town of Kimberley where the singer currently resides on April 19th 2011.
For show dates and venues and to keep up with the latest on Operation Frankie visit:
http://www.helpforheroes.org.uk/great-british-pub-tour
Or follow Frankie Martin on Twitter here:
http://twitter.com/MrFrankieMartin
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