Children in Need appeal raises more than Â£900,000

Award-winning Irish pop tenor Eamonn McCrystal and Irish singer/songwriter and original former member of Celtic Women Chloe Agnew who performed at BBC Children in Need in Titanic Belfast. Pic by William Cherry, Press Eye.

As the phone lines closed yesterday (Saturday) morning, the UK total stood at £46,624,259 and locally at £950,239.

Barra Best and Jo Scott presented the evening in Titanic Belfast and hooked up with the BBC One Children in Need live show to give updates on what was happening around Northern Ireland.

One of the highlights of the night saw 178 children from Northern Ireland joining thousands of others from across the UK to form a choir to take part in a nationwide live performance of ‘Lean on Me’.

The evening got under way at 7.30pm on Friday night with Tess Daly and Greg James.

Barra and Jo gave BBC Northern Ireland viewers a taste of the ingenious and inventive ways local people have been fundraising for this year’s appeal and also looked at some of the many local groups that have been supported by BBC Children in Need.

Throughout the week, BBC Radio Ulster supported the appeal. As part of this, Hugo Duncan and his team raised over £18,000 towards this year’s NI total through Hugo’s on-air auction.

Last year on the night, the Northern Ireland total was £903,918, contributing to an overall UK total of £37.1m.

BBC Children in Need spends the money to make a positive change to the lives of disadvantaged children and young people, in Northern Ireland and all across the UK.

It currently funds 197 projects to the value of over £8 million, in every county across Northern Ireland.