New Trustee Appointments

Pepper Announces New Patron

Bon Voyage to Nick Potts

Pepper Announces New Patron

Dennis Fairey
We are delighted to announce that Dennis Fairey has accepted an offer from the Trustees to become a patron of the Pepper Foundation. Dennis continues to be the " communications guru" for the charity, having spent several years providing creative design and printing expertise and as well as a Pepper Trustee.

Dennis is responsible for updating the Pepper corporate identity into the much admired format we see today, and has championed the literature and website redesign. He is also responsible for editing our Pepper News newsletter and the monthly updates for our website - a right little clever ‘dick’.

Dennis' connections with local churches also introduced the "Pepper Praise" services slotting into one of the days during the summer show when we did not have a Sunday performance, raising a lot of money for the charity on what would otherwise have been a clear day.

Through his media and publishing connections, he also persuaded Jonathan Scott of the BBC Big Cat Diary fame to speak at the Berkhamsted Collegiate School Centenary Hall and was responsible for publishing and producing the Summer Show programme and all the marketing material for at least 5 years.

We are delighted to welcome Dennis to join our select band of patrons.

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New Trustee Appointments

Following the recent AGM, two new Pepper Trustees were appointed to the board to replace the vacancies left by Dave Soulsby and Dennis Fairey who retired in 2007 by rotation.

Tony Hill
Following a very enjoyable and varied career in IT, Tony took early retirement in 2006. In common with the role of his fellow Trustees, his prime objective now is to be given the opportunity of giving something back to the community. He was particularly impressed by the commitment and dedication shown by everyone involved with Pepper, who make an invaluable and much needed contribution to families touched by the serious
illness of a child. ‘By becoming a Trustee of The Pepper Foundation’ he says, ‘it will create the ideal opportunity for me to join a strong dedicated team and provide me with a very interesting and worthwhile challenge’.

Tony has been married for 28 years and has two children. His hobbies include long-distance running, crosswords, mathematics and philosophy.

Valerie Gunn
Valerie has been involved with Pepper in one way or another since the earliest days – even to the extent of actually appearing on stage on one memorable occasion! Valerie and her husband Richard have helped with and latterly run the annual raffle for more years than she cares to remember, and is proud of the contribution it makes to the annual
fundraising total.

She has also served as a Trustee of the Iain Rennie Hospice at Home for seven years, five of them as Chairman, and the children’s service was obviously an important part of her responsibility.

Valerie hopes that her broad knowledge and experience of Pepper and Iain Rennie will help her make a real contribution to the work of The Pepper Foundation in this next stage of the Foundation’s development.

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Pepper Announces New Patron

Trisha Buller
The Trustees of The Pepper Foundation have pleasure announcing that they have confirmed the appointment of Trisha Buller as a new Patron to the charity.

Trisha Buller has been a long term and enthusiastic supporter of Pepper for many years.

Together with her Ciente team, based in Berkhamsted High Street, Trisha has supervised and provided hair stylists and make-up services for all the cast of the Pepper Show for the last five years in addition to running special events such as a fashion show and supported other events that have made a real difference.

Trisha has also been a member of the Pepper Corporate Fundraising Team.

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Bon Voyage to Nick Potts

Many Pepper supporters and followers will be familiar with the name Nick Potts who, as one of the old stalwarts – or if you excuse the obvious pun, one of the original ‘Pepper Potts’ – devoted hours of his free time over the years to raise enormous amounts of money for the charity.

As well as being a Trustee of the Foundation for a number of years and a director of Pepper Events Limited (PEL), since it was formed in 1997, Nick worked as Deputy to Linda Horsfall who was Event Chair for three years.

Whilst running the Bookstack in Berkhamsted and Harpenden High Streets, he and his wife Dee, who sadly died a couple of years ago, did a fantastic job selling tickets for the Annual Summer Show and other Pepper fundraising events. They also organised the Friends pre-booking tickets for a number of years which, in addition to running their own business, took quite a lot of organisation.

Through his close association with the book publishing industry, Nick had access to quite a few ‘A’ list celebrities, therefore raised an enormous amount of money by holding events such as an evening with Cricket Umpire – Dickie Bird, the actor David Suchet, Terry Waite and John Simpson, plus a concert with the tribute band – The Commitments. He was also instrumental in organising the Berkhamsted Half Marathon and 5 mile Fun Run for some time during his association with Berkhamsted Rotary Club resulting in serious money being donated to Pepper and other local charities.

More recently, he hit upon the idea of holding charity lunches and dinners at the Gatsby Piano Restaurant and Bar in Berkhamsted High Street which proved an enormous success.

All the team at Pepper wish him well as he moves out of town to take up residence as 'Lord of the Manor' in his new home in Suffolk which we understand is more of a country estate than a two up and two down!

Thank you Nick for all your invaluable hard work over the years, which has enabled Pepper to grow from strength to strength to celebrate its 20th Anniversary this year.

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