The SuperJam Adventure Reaches The Magic Kingdom...
At the weekend, I visited my old pal Mickey Mouse at Disneyland Paris. He loves SuperJam*.
I was very kindly invited by European Study Tours to speak to 1,600 British school kids who were on an amazing business studies and ICT school trip.
After I went on the roller coasters, I spoke in a massive Disney auditorium to the students; sharing with them the amazing adventure that I have been on over the past few years. I told them the story of how I took my Gran's recipe from the kitchen table to the shelves of Waitrose and other massive supermarket chains.
The students enjoyed the talk and were generous enough to laugh at my awful jokes. They made me feel like a celebrity by queuing up for about forty five minutes to have their pictures taken with me!
Thanks again to European Study Tours and all of the pupils on the trip. See you next time Mickey!
Last week, I was very kindly invited to speak to the pupils at a school on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales.
The pupils, aged 14-16, were working on coming up with ideas to set up their own small businesses as part of an after school group run by the "Mentermon", a government-backed organisation that aims to foster enterprise on the island.
I shared the story of how SuperJam came about and how we got the SuperJam Tea Parties off the ground. The kids were very enthusiastic and asked questions for about half an hour.
While I was on Anglesey, I got to stop off at "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch", a small village that holds the Guinness Book of Records title of having the longest place name in the world.
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Our Joe, seen here sporting a mustache-less face, has been working at SuperJam for a few months. His favorite flavour is Raspberry & Cranberry and the highlight of his job with us so far was meeting Sir Terry Wogan..
Joe has very courageously decided to grow a sponsored mustache throughout the month of November ('Movember'), to raise money for prostate cancer research. SuperJam is going to chip a few hundred pounds into his effort and it would be really wonderful if you could maybe donate a few pounds to the cause here.
Hopefully Joe will raise a lot of money for a really worthwhile cause and not too many people will laugh at his silly mustache.
(We'll post a picture of his mustache at the end of the month!)
Last week, I was very kindly invited to visit Wick, which is a few miles from John o' Groats (the most Northernly point of mainland Britain).
The reason for the trip was to give a few talks at local schools, including to over 300 kids at Wick high school. I also had the pleasure of visiting the Laurandy Centre, which was hosting the most Northerly ever SuperJam tea party for 30 or so elderly guests.
It was a really lovely trip and I was shown around by Professor Iain Blaikie, a friend of mine, who organised the trip and is a big believer in getting entrepreneurs, inventors, astronauts and political figures to speak to pupils at the local schools.
We even went for lunch on the shortest street in the world, which is in Wick and is about one and a half meters long!
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If you happen to follow my Twitter, you'll know that a couple of weeks ago I was followed around for a whole day by a film crew from BBC Alba, the Gaelic channel.
We had a lovely day filming for 'Cuide Ri Cathy', with Cathy McDonald. We tried out a new jam recipe in the morning, visited the local Waitrose supermarket to see the products on the shelves and then had a massive tea party in the afternoon.
Don't worry; it is mostly in English and the Gaelic parts have subtitles.
You can watch the program on BBC iPlayer here, for the next week.
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I spotted this at a friend's flat and though it was definitely worthy of taking this week's crown.
It is a sort of rubbery tea cosy and looks funkier in real life than it does in this picture I took.
Of course, if you would like to knit a tea cosy to help support our SuperJam Tea Parties project, which is growing fast and really needs more cosies, feel free to knit one and send it in. We'll send you some jam to say thanks and feature your work on the blog.
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Recently, Eteaket tea boutique opened its doors on Frederick street in Edinburgh. They serve a range of wonderful teas, cream teas, afternoon teas and home baking, soon to include our jam! You should definitely pop in for a cuppa if you're in town.
Eteaket have very generously agreed to support the regular SuperJam Tea Parties in Edinburgh and will be serving their wonderful teas, alongside the scones and SuperJam. With their help and support, we are hoping to make the events even bigger and better. The guests at last week's tea party (picture here) thoroughly enjoyed Eteaket's teas. You can check out their website, order some of their products or learn more about their philosophy here.
As you know, as part of The SuperJam Tea Parties, we have been running a massive nationwide 'knitathon'. The elderly guests of our tea parties have been very kindly knitting thousands of squares, which we've sewn together to make blankets for these orphans in Gwalior, central India.
Every child at the orphanage, about seventy, have already got a blanket each and we still have more than four hundred squares to be sewn together - which will be sent to other orphans in India.
The orphanage, SuperJam and everyone who has been involved in putting everything together really wants to thank everyone who took the time to knit squares. The kids are over the moon with their blankets and the Sponsor a Square fundraiser (feel free to click here and sponsor the squares for £1 to help raise much needed money for supplies for the orphanage) has so far raised over £600.
You can see some more photographs of the kids with their blankets here.
The next SuperJam Tea Party is this Thursday, 2nd April 2pm-4pm at Meadowbank Sports Centre, London Road, Edinburgh. Please do come along and feel free to bring some home baking!
Today I came across a rather remarkable story. As you know, knitting is something that I write about a lot and we have a Tea Cosy of The Week competition.
You may already be familiar with Jo Eglen, who has been in the media a bit recently. She runs the 'Little Hen Rescue Centre', a home for 5,750 ex-battery hens.
A lot of the hens are bald when they get to her, so she came up with a novel and frankly brilliant solution; knit jumpers for all the hens!
The article in the Telegraph says: "The response was incredible and she has now kitted out 1,500 birds with woolly jumpers to keep the warm in the winter months.
"Some battery farms have up to 10,000 hens of the same age. They get quite thin and bald because of the stress and heat. About 60 per cent of the hens that come through are bald."
"We have patterns on our website that are straight-forward and simple. We've had 1,500 jumpers come through in just the past two months. So many different kinds - Christmas-themed jumpers, multi-coloured ones, some with bows and stripes."
How to make Tea (Public Education Film, Circa 1941)..
I love vintage public information films, like this one from 1941, promoting good tea making practices.
"Tea carts are on standby ready to be sent off at a moments notice."
There's something for everyone in this movie from the BFI archives. Tea connoisseurs will benefit from the six golden tips for making the perfect cuppa, as well as countless other handy hints (never store your tea next to cheese, for example).
Linguists will marvel at the way they say "orf" rather than "off" and if you're someone who likes a man with eyebrows then we've got just the one!
I found this video thanks to a link in the Today Was Fun newsletter.
Twitter is becoming something of a phenomenon and has been on the news a lot over the past few weeks.
One of the most famous 'tweeters' in the UK is Stephen Fry, of Qi fame. I've been following his tweets for some time and find it very amusing. You might have read a few weeks ago that he was stuck in a lift and his 'followers' were able to live the experience with him, through his regular up-to-160-character posts.
For those of you who don't know what Twitter is; it allows users to post about what they are doing, reading and thinking in real time, in short posts, sort of like text-messages. If you like, you can follow my updates by signing up to my tweets here.
SuperJam is placed 18 out of 100, which I think is quite cool. Other entrepreneurial companies on the list are Tossed, the chain of London salad bars, Plum Baby, the fast-growing brand of healthy Super Food baby food and notonthehighstreet.com, a portal for buying quirky and unique products from hundreds of small companies across the country.
It is inspiring and very interesting reading about all of the 100 entrepreneurial companies on this list.
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For the past couple of months, i've been writing about a variety of useful and interesting websites that I have come across online. Previous posts were about Graze, the online healthy snack delivery company and A Quarter Of..., the old-fashioned sweet shop on the internet, where you can buy all of the sweets you used to fight over in the playground.
This week, I came across a website called mySupermarket.co.uk. This site allows you to compare the price of your online grocery shopping from Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Ocado. You are able to import your favorites from your existing supermarket's online shop, to compare how much it would cost elsewhere. It also displays the offers that each supermarket has, which means you can take advantage of the best prices at all the supermarkets, while only doing your shopping through one site.
You can also calculate how many calories are in your basket and compare the calorific content of different products, which would probably be quite a handy function if you are watching what you're eating.
As you know, I write quite a lot about the world of knitting. The guests often knit at our Tea Parties and we encourage readers of the blog and subscribers of the email newsletter to send in hand-knitted Tea Cosies, as part of our 'Tea Cosy of The Week Competition'.
Today, I found out about a very cool knitting shop in London, called I Knit, that is hosting 'The Knitting in Film and Television Awards'. The awards were set up to celebrate knitting, crochet and needlecraft in film and television.
From the site:
"The first ever KNIFTAs will be announced at our party on Sunday 22nd February 2009 at The Crown and Two Chairmen, Dean Street, Soho, W1D 3RZ (upstairs bar). From 4pm to 10pm. Only one thing is certain...Kate Winslet won't win one."
As reported by a number of publications, including Sky News, Fruit Pectin (which is a natural ingredient added to jam), could be beneficial to the fight against cancer.
The article says:
"The binding of pectin with gal3 (a protein that influences all stages of cancer progression) is thought to affect its ability to promote the growth of cancerous cells, according to the study published in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal.
Professor Vic Morris, who led the study, said the modified pectin used in jellies and jams was likely to produce the anti-cancer effect."
I'm going on a trip to a massive trade fair in Dubai in a few weeks. I was talking about it with my friend Anne and she told me about the rather odd obsession that the city has with Tea Pots.
I was sent some pictures of the gigantic tea pots that they have in Dubai. It seems like a pretty wacky place, I'm looking forward to go on a little drive around the roundabouts there....
I have today been spending a bit of time watching the amazing talks and lectures you will find on the 'Do Lectures' site. The speakers include the inventor Trevor Bayliss, author and bread expert Andrew Whitley and Guy Watson of the Riverford Organic box scheme.
The idea behind the event is that 'People who DO things can inspire others to DO things'. Every year, the event invites DOers from business, the arts, campaigning, inventing and so on to share their stories and give insight about what inspires them, what motivates them and why they do what they do.
The event is sponsored by the wonderful Howies company, who produce a great collection of ethical clothing.
David Hieatt, co-founder of the event says "When you listen to their stories, they just light a fire in your belly to go and Do your thing, your passion, the thing that sits in the back your head each day, just waiting, and waiting for you to follow your heart.
To go find your cause to fight for, your company to go start, your invention to invent, your book to write, your mountain to climb."
The event takes place in West Wales and all of the 60 delegates camp out over the course of the days. For more information, check out the website.
A Quarter Of... is a website that hosts an incredible selection of sweets and candies from years gone buy. Like an old-fashioned sweet shop on the web.
You can buy cherry lips, sweet tobacco, Black Jacks and Space Dust. All the sweets you remember growing up with but that, sadly, aren't around any more.
You should check them out here if you fancy reminding yourself of the playground.
You may have seen this film in cinemas last year. It is about a group of elderly people in Northampton, Massachusetts, who have formed a rock band. They have a combined age of over 2,000 years.
They have grown in popularity so much over the past few years, especially after a film was made about their story, that they play to sell-out crowds all over the world.
MSNBC Says:
"Some of what they sing shouts the honest part of growing old. Their concerts are intelligent and deep. Ninety minutes nonstop, constantly shifting from laughter to tears.
"Nothing to do and nowhere to go,” they croon. “I want to be sedated."
It took standing ovations for director Bob Cilman to convince the chorus to sing the songs they used to tell their kids to turn down."
This is, of course, similar to the story of the British group 'The Zimmers', who shot to fame last year following the release of their single 'My Generation'.
These stories are inspirational because they demonstrate that, regardless of how old you are, you can still be entertaining, funny and try to improve how other people are perceived and treated in society.
Of course, through The SuperJam Tea Parties, I hope that we are able to bring fun and motivation to the lives of thousands of elderly people who are living alone, are housebound or who live in care.
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Today, I signed up to a pretty cool website. I thought i'd post about it since it is similar to SuperJam in its approach to health, super foods and good packaging design.
Graze is an online subscription service, created by the founder of LoveFilm. You can sign up for relatively little cost to have healthy, natural snacks delivered to your desk or home once a week or even every day.
The boxes come with nuts, dried fruit and various other things. You can actually sign up for a free trial on their website. They will send you a box of snacks for free, which is rather generous of them.
I'd say it is a business to watch over the coming year, I think their concept will be very popular. I wonder if people would subscribe to have their jam delivered every week?
Blueberries improve your memory (if you're a rat, anyway.)
As you know, we use Super Fruits in our SuperJams, such as blueberries and cranberries.
This is because they contain particularly high levels of vitamins and antioxidants. I'm often reading articles about these amazing fruits and came across a particularly interesting one in a recent edition of New Scientist (you can read it here). I've been meaning to post about it for a while, but kept forgetting.
A scientist called James Joseph from Tufts University in Boston was studying antioxidant-rich foods like strawberries, spinach and blueberries. Antioxidants reverse some memory loss linked to old age, probably by mopping up free radicals in the brain.
For eight weeks, Joseph fed supplements of strawberries, spinach or blueberries to three groups of 19-month-old rats; the equivalent of 60 to 65 years old for humans. He then assessed their memories and mobility with a number of standard tests.
All the rats showed improvements in memory compared with rats that were not given antioxidant-rich food to eat. Surprisingly, the rats fed with blueberries also had better balance and coordination in tasks such as running along a rod.
The whole article is here, if you fancy reading more.
How to make a Jet Engine from your used SuperJam jar!
Make Magazine produce weekly online video project guides, providing instructions on how to create various gadgets and experiments from household objects. I love watching the videos and the things these guys make are usually pretty useless but very fun.
To celebrate the 1st anniversary of their 'Weekend Projects' series, they decided to build a jet using a jam jar.
Since it was in some way relevant to jam (but overall just very cool), I thought i'd post it on the blog. You can check out the video here.
Karen Hanrahan teaches a workshop titled Healthy Choices for Children. It's a class for parents seeking solutions to how to improve the way they eat. It's about the alternative food market, organics, and the top ten food additives to avoid and why, menu planning and more.
She uses this burger as a prop. She purchased the burger in 1996, 12 years ago, from McDonald's and it looks identical to one that she might have purchased today.
The flecks on the burger are crumbs from the bun, the burger is starting to crumble a bit and smells a little odd. However, the point is that it has been laced with such a cocktail of chemicals and preservatives that it hasn't degraded, and perhaps never will.
Clearly, eating food that isn't natural is unlikely to be very good for you. It is important to me that SuperJam is made entirely from fruit and fruit juice, without anything artificial. Sure, it will only last a month or two in your 'fridge - but surely that is preferable to your food being so artificial that it can last forever...
A lot of folks kindly send in their serving ideas and even recipes using SuperJam, which is always pretty cool to receive.
However, I also come across a lot of people who use jam in quite odd ways...
Jessica, from Sacramento, California has sent in a picture of herself eating SuperJam on boiled eggs.
Not sure if it's a US thing. I haven't tried it myself yet so I won't put it down entirely but I don't think we'll be adding it to the serving suggestions on the back of the SuperJam jars...
Alan, from Balloch near Glasgow, has sent in a picture of himself eating what he has imaginatively dubbed 'Jam-Offee'.
He puts SuperJam in his coffee in the mornings. I find this a particularly weird concept. Alan, whose surname is Beverage and he is studying for a PhD at Strathclyde (which will make him Dr. Beverage), is an avid inventor of new drink 'mash ups' and says that he has ambitions to, one day, build the 'Jam-Offee' brand into a worldwide chain of coffee shops.
Good luck with that.
Do you put your jam anywhere unusual? Feel free to send in a picture (unless it's particularly unsavory), and I'll maybe write about it.
Today I came across a remarkable man. He calls himself 'The Toast Man'.
Maurice Bennett is a New Zealand-based artist who creates massive murals using toast. This is his gigantic picture of Elvis Presley, created entirely from thousands of slices of toast. His website says:
"With the success and notoriety created by the toast portraits, and the aspect that I wish to explore the "Flame as a paintbrush" idea further, I have continued my interest in toast as a medium. I am working towards an exhibition later this year in which the colours and designs of Tapa Cloth are imprinted onto the toast with the help of a high powered blowtorch."
I look forward to seeing more of his work, it is really quite outstanding...
SuperJam launched over eighteen months ago, with three original flavours. Following the massive success of the range, we've finally managed to develop a fourth flavour, Orange & Passion Fruit.
One of the most common questions of the past couple of years has been 'Why don't you make marmalade?'. Well, after lots of recipes and all kinds of different ideas, this is a really fab tasting addition to the SuperJam range - available now at Asda and soon at Waitrose and everywhere else..
Lots of folks have been kindly sending in beautiful tea cosies to help suppport our fast-growing social project, The SuperJam Tea Parties.
Knitting is no longer just a hobby for Grandmothers; it seems that the skill is one that is seeing something of a renaissance. I personally think its very cool. I was looking up the worldwide knitting championships, where knitters from all over the world come to find out who is the fastest knitter.
This year's winner is Hazel Tindall from Shetland, who knitted a mighty 262 loops in just three minutes. You can watch some BBC Scotland coverage of her preparing for the competition, here.
If that inspires you to take up some needles, feel free to knit a tea cosy that we'll put to good use at our tea parties. If we particularly like your work, we'll even feature your cosy as our Tea Cosy of The Week and will send you a bunch of jam as a thank you. Worldwide fame awaits you.
I went to scouts as a kid and it was a lot of fun; cooking/burning sausages on an open fire, camping in the rain and playing since-banned games like 'British Bulldogs'. Recently, my old Scout group in Cramond, Edinburgh went all the way to Iceland for a Jamboree.
You couldn't really go to a jamboree without some jam, so I gave them a bunch and they kindly sent back some snaps from the trip.
If you are a community group and would like some jam, let me know. Always happy to help out.
I recently came across this work of art, which is currently housed at the Modern Art Gallery of Buenos Aires. It is constructed from an incredible 2,500 slices of toast (which took several friends with their toasters a few days to make..), all toasted for different lengths of time. The overall piece is 5m by 4.5m and you can read more about it here .
Although I like to promote jam as being versatile and tasty on porridge, oatcakes, yoghurt, rice pudding and all kinds of things, one thing remains true, nothing beats some buttered toast with a healthy layer of jam.
I recently came across one of the oddest and frankly coolest 'museums' in the world, The International Toaster Museum . I'm a big fan of old typewriters, toasters and general retro contraptions. The Toaster Museum, created by designer Jens Veerbeck, boasts a collection of about 600 old toasters, ranging from the likes of this 60's beauty to toasters that twirl and flip your toast and even toasters made out of porcelain.
I must confess that my own toaster is fairly standard issue but this website has inspired me to hunt out an impractical mechanical monster with levers and springs that'll probably burn my toast but look damn cool in my kitchen...
As you know, we've been running a wee competition on the website. If you take a photo of yourself with your jar of SuperJam in some place exotic, we'll send you a bunch of SuperJam goodies. So far, we've had photos of folks in front of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, in New York and even in Tokyo.
Recently, Emily went on a trip to Uganda to do some volunteering work with a community there. She loves SuperJam so much that she couldn't go all that way without taking it with her and sending back some snaps. Good work Emily, we'll send you a whole pile of well earned SuperJam stuff!
Our buddies at Contact the Elderly , who run tea parties for lonely elderly people across the country, were recently featured on the telly. You can watch a video here , with Jonathan Ross helping out with one of their group's meetings.
I think that the work Contact the Elderly do is great. So great actually that we're working together right now to figure out how SuperJam can do something about loneliness among the elderly. They'll certainly be needing some good jam at their tea parties if they're entertaining the likes of Mr Ross!
Real men eat porridge for breakfast. I do anyway. Of course, porridge tastes great with a generous blob of SuperJam. Here's a wee video about how best to make porridge, courtesy of Jaqueline O'Donnell, chef at the award winning restaurant 'The Sisters'.
Porridge oats are also a 'super food' and you might have seen on telly recently that they help lower cholesterol. Porridge sets you up for the day. I have a chum called Tony who runs a really good organic porridge company called Stoats . Of course, he uses really good jam when he serves his bowls of hot porridge....
In fact, my buddy Pete has a business called Foodie Boxes - you can get a gift box with Stoats porridge and SuperJam in it.
Lorraine Kelly wrote in her dieting blog on The Sun website today: "I had some wholemeal toast today with that new 'SuperJam' created by a teenage entrepreneur in Scotland. He has made a range of healthy jam with no added sugar that tastes brilliant. My favourite is the rhubarb". Mine too.
Last night I was amazed to find out that the SuperJam story has made it to pretty much the antipodal (furthest away) point in the world: New Zealand. The footage used by Five News and Sky News in the UK (and elsewhere in the world) was used by New Zealand's Channel 3. You can view the video here.
I've also found out that the story was covered this week on Hong Kong, Malta and in Spain. There'll also be a feature in one of the Norweigan papers in a few days so: hello to the international visitors to the site!
To be honest, I've only really written this post so that I can put up this picture. It looks like I am just a head, haha.
Anyway, if you didn't know, this week was 'Enterprise Week'. This is the one week of the year where thousands of enterprise related events take place simultaneously, with the aim of encouraging young people to think about starting their own businesses or become more enterprising in their lives. As this is something that I am quite big on, I rolled up my sleeves and got stuck in with helping at various events around the country.
On Monday, I spoke to about 1,000 schoolkids from around Scotland at the annual Young Enterprise Scotland conference. This was quite a laugh and the kids were visibly enthused by my story - hopefully some of them went away thinking 'well, if he can do it then why can't I?...'
The picture at the top of the page is of me 'launching' the Biggart Baillie Innovation Awards at the Glasgow Science Centre. I gave a talk about the process of coming up with my innovation, which led to me being a winner at last years awards. If you have invented something or started an innovative business, I would urge you to check it out . There are three categories (Student, Open and Female) and a prize of £1,000 for each.
I have also been involved in the Make Your Mark Challenge , which is the biggest live enterprise event in the country and will see teams of schoolkids compete next Thursday to solve a problem that will be set on the day. This is being hosted by Heather Suttie, the Xfm DJ and I will be helping to judge the entries.
To finish off the week, I was invited to speak to students at Bath University about starting a business, juggling studies while running one and what help is out there for young entrepreneurs. That was all rounded off by a drink in the rather impressive setting of the city's famous Roman Baths.
I spend a lot of time trying other peoples' jams from around the world. Partly looking for ideas but mostly since I just love jam. Ocassionally, however, I come across a flavour of jam that doesn't really work.
This morning, I was trying the range of jams made by a German company called 'Muhlhauser'. They make all the old classics like Strawberry and Raspberry, which they didn't do a bad job of really. What really amazed me though was their 'blackcurrant and chocolate jam' ("with fine chocolate"). This was obviously the brainwave of someone in their marketing department ("chocolate spread sells well.....blackcurrant jam sells well....").
As wonderful as blackcurrant and fine chocolate sounds, it is quite inedible.
Before I start, I'm going to point out that I am not actually a millionaire. However, I have recently contributed my thoughts and advice for aspiring entrepreneurs to a book called 'how to be a teenage millionaire'. It is not a bad wee book for teenagers who are maybe thinking about whether they want to start their own business, either now or in the future.
Encouraging other young people to think about starting their own business is one of my big things. I've got so much out of starting SuperJam that I couldn't recommend a better way of life to other people than being an entrepreneur.
I get a couple of emails every day from teenagers who are thinking about starting up their own businesses. This is something that I love and am always more than happy to help in whatever way I can. I'm keen to hear from young people about what they think about starting their own business, what obstacles they face and what kind of businesses they would like to start.
The SuperJam tastings are continuing. I'm clocking up railmiles faster than the average GNER ticket conductor. Next week I will be staying in Birmingham ('oooh, get you with the travel') and visiting some of the Waitrose stores in the West Midlands. Here's the places/dates if you fancy popping along to say hello:
Monday 11th: Hall Green Tuesday 12th: Newport (not Wales) Wednesday 13th: None. Thursday 14th: Going on the telly Friday 15th: Stourbridge Saturday 16th: Droitwich Sunday 17th: Wolverhampton
Monday 18th: Wolverhampton Tuesday 19th: Four Oaks Wednesday 20th: None. Thursday 21st: The Highland Show, Ingliston (Scotland) Friday 22nd: The Highland Show Saturday 23rd: The Highland Show Sunday 24th: The Highland Show
I've had a pretty eventful week. Spoken at three conferences, won an award and organised another couple of weeks of tastings.
On Thursday, I spoke at a big education conference in London (before flying back to Edinburgh to speak at a similar event). The topic was 'enterprise in education', something that I am quite passionate about. As a young entrepreneur still passing through the education system, I guess I'm a good position to give pointers on where improvements can be made to help others become more enterprising.
I don't have many major criticisms of the education system but there are a few things that I think are important for the policymakers to think about when trying to create a 'culture of enterprise' in Britain. There's an article on the BBC News website about what I said, if you are interested.
After these two speeches, I went along to 'The Outstanding Young Persons of the World Awards'. I won an award in the Scottish Economic/Enterprise section, alongside Michelle Mone (of the 'Ultimo' bra). TOYP is a worldwide competition and previous winners (of the global round) include Elvis and Jackie Chan. There were a lot of inspirational people at the ceremony in Edinburgh and I was, obviously, delighted to be given an award.
We all had a lovely meal overlooking Edinburgh Castle, chatting about all of the amazing stories that had led to everyone being given awards. My favourite part of the meal was a 'Blueberry and Blackcurrant SuperJam sponge mille-fieulle with a Raspberry and Cranberry SuperJam coulis'. The photo above is of the chef, Joe, with myself.
