BBC Radio Gloucestershire... A week of fabulous stories!

Last week, I answered the BBC Radio Gloucestershire #PhoneWithNoHome and spoke with the lovely Mark Cummings, telling him a bit about myself, my hairloss and my ambitions. To my delight (and without any bribery on my part), Mark asked me to come back on the show and even better, he selected the 1st September breakfast show to coincide with the start of Alopecia Awareness Month.

After a ridiculously early start yesterday, I hesitantly strolled into the studio and awaited my turn in front of a mildly daunting microphone. Mark was a delight and asked me intelligent questions about life in the bald lane, giving me plenty of air time to talk Alopecia, Alopecia UK and Alopecia Awareness month.

Even better, my story started the ball rolling and the rest of this week will feature more people who have overcome adversity and made something of themselves! Listening to the trailers for the shows, I must say I'm once again humbled and feel truly lucky to be dealing with hairloss rather than a life-threatening condition, and really hope that this local feature will help remind others just how lucky we all are!

Thank you very much to Mark Cummings and BBC Radio Gloucestershire for having me on the show and for those of you who would like to listen, you can do so here...

(I'm at about 1hr21 and again at 1hr43)

Victoria x

www.prettybald.co.uk Twitter: @PrettyBald

BBC Radio Gloucestershire tomorrow...

On the morning drivetime show on our local radio station BBC Radio Gloucetershire, Presenter Mark Cummings has created an ingenious feature called 'The Phone With No Home'. It is as you might have guessed, a mobile phone that passes from person to person around the County. Started a few months ago, the phone is given to someone, who answers it at about 8.40am, chats about themselves, then passes it on to the next person and so on and so forth. The process is designed to be organic, and so you get a whole range of individual characters on the show, from local Business People to the owner of a Village shop, a retired person to a young adult. Anyone could answer the phone and what they say really might surprise you!

This feature is one of my faves and I listen to it nearly every morning! I've loved the personal and interesting stories which have been shared along the way and think it is a great way to get to know more about the County!

To my surprise, just over a week ago my friend Glyn text me on Sunday evening, letting me know he'd been given #ThePhoneWithNoHome by his brother and would be appearing on air on Monday morning. He wanted to pass it on to me if I was willing, to be on air on Tuesday! Of course I was! I wasn't going to pass up an opportunity for a little more Alopecia Awareness.

So last Tuesday, I proudly answered #ThePhoneWithNoHome (a dream come true for me) and had a quick chat with Mark Cummings. Aside from one or two technical difficulties with signal, and a bit of muddling of words, it went pretty well I think! At least well enough that I can now announce that tomorrow morning, at around 7.15am I will actually be in the BBC Radio Gloucestershire studio sharing more of my story and importantly talking about Alopecia Awareness Month! A perfect way to kick off a month of awareness!

Please tune in tomorrow from about 7am (if you are up) and listen live to the show. If you aren't in Gloucestershire, then you can listen online here.

In the meantime, there are just two things left to do. The first is to thank Glyn from Collett and Holder for giving me the phone, and Gill Parker Sculptor for taking it from me, and the second is to point you in the direction of my stint with #ThePhoneWithNoHome on BBC iPlayer at about 2hr53!

Thanks folks and wish me luck!

Victoria x  

www.prettybald.co.uk Twitter: @PrettyBald

Taking over Chelt52; hairloss awareness in my local area...

As you know, for me, awareness of alopecia and other hairloss conditions is crucial to helping change perceptions, and ensuring body confidence for those who are going through hairloss difficulties! 
Well, I have some exciting news for you - next week, (commencing 7th September) Pretty Bald is taking over the @Chelt52 account on Twitter. We are very excited to be undertaking such a big project and we’d really appreciate it if every one of you guys could support us. It’s really easy, all you have to do is follow @Chelt52 on Twitter and retweet us!

@Chelt52 was set up at the beginning of 2014 as an innovative initiative to create a 'unique voice' in the local area; the idea behind it is a central Twitter Handle (@Chelt52) which is handed over and run by a different company, organisation or individual each week. You can find out more here...

There any many reasons why Pretty Bald is taking over @Chelt52 but the main one is of course to raise awareness. The account has nearly 10,500 followers, which is a pretty big audience for our Alopecia message! Even better, we asked for (and were granted) a week in September, taking advantage of the fact that September is National Alopecia Awareness month. How fitting! 

Running Pretty Bald as a business, my ambition is to provide a useful service, with products that we all need (at least baldies do), at the same time raising as much money as possible for charity. The whole business is running not-for-profit, which means when you buy a product from us, any profit that would normally go to the staff and Directors of a business instead go to charity! A win-win! 

Just as important for me, is our ambition to empower women (and men) locally and nationally who are suffering from hairloss and other circumstances and conditions which affect their confidence. Our first project of course was the Pretty Bald Calendar, and @Chelt52 is another example of this awareness campaign.

All you have to do to check out my week with @Chelt52 is to hop onto Twitter, click 'follow' on the account, then watch as I tweet and if you're feeling nice, Retweet or Favourite the things you like the most so that between us, we can make it go as far as possible!

Victoria x

www.prettybald.co.uk Twitter: @PrettyBald