ANDY and Clara Carr were the winners of the Mr and Mrs fundraising event, jointly run by Wolfe Tones and Shannon Musical Society on Friday.
MC for the night was Aodán Fox, and he said it was a great success.
“It was a super night, really, really good. There was great support, a great turnout, and the reaction was fantastic. It went down a bomb,” said Aodán.
Of the winning couple, he said, “Andy is a former chairman of the GAA club. Clara was a bit nervous about getting up on the stage but they were great. They were voted winners on the night, it went by an audience vote. That’s how we raised the funds, the audience could buy votes.
“After the first round we opened up the polling booths and they could buy the votes from them. It was a fun night, a lot of laughs.
“There were eight couples, they really got into the spirit of it, there was great support from the audience and it was a great laugh.”
He said it had been a really good collaboration between the two organisations.
“Whatever was raised will be split 50-50 between Wolfe Tones and the Musical Society. We used their venue, we (Shannon Musical Society) decorated it and the hall looked great.
“There was some sponsorship of balloons and things like that. I’m not sure what the final figure will be, we definitely made money from it though.”
Aodán had tried to get a bit of background about all the couples in advance.
“There was a bit of preparation in it to be honest, a lot of time putting together the questions and getting some background information on some of the couples to personalise the questions and to have a few inside jokes.
“We threw a few surprises on the night, some of the information that I had, they wouldn’t have been aware that I had it! It was quite funny in places, we got quite a few laughs out of it.”
It’s a relatively unusual type of fundraiser and he felt it was greatly enjoyed.
“The reaction was absolutely fantastic. People were asking if we’d be doing it again next year, could we make it an annual thing. I don’t know about that, but people definitely enjoyed it.
“It was the kind of night where you could just come down and watch the show and be entertained.
“People really enjoyed the fact that it was something different that they hadn’t seen before. Fundraisers are usually a table quiz or something people have seen before, but this was something new.”
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked with a number of other publications in Limerick, Cork and Galway. His first book will be published in December 2024.