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News& Magazines ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS... – P62 NEWSPAPERS Scottish Sun pays tribute to category champions
THE BEST OF SCOTLAND’S NEWSAGENTS RECOGNISED The Sun has recognised four Scottish newsagents within its Top 50 Retailers in the UK for championing the news category and launching charitable community initiatives.
SCOTLAND’S TOP STORES WERE: 1) J&R McInnes, Dalry Dalry newsagent Pauline Devlin’s daughters Rebecca and Jessica have collected over 10,000 of The Sun’s Books for Schools tokens to help children and schools in the local area. They put a voucher drop box on the counter and encouraged all customers to pop their vouchers in it. They even convinced non-Sun buyers to purchase the newspaper and donate their tokens. As a result, they were able to help three local schools. 2) Premier Broadway Convenience, Edinburgh Linda and Dennis Williams, owners of Premier Broadway Convenience Store, have a long track record of engaging with their Oxgangs community in Edinburgh. So when they heard about a local resident who had a heart attack, they took the decision to support the local community by having a defibrillator fitted outside the store. Dennis said: “Even if we could only save one life, then it would be well worth it.”
Scotland’s biggest selling newspaper, The Scottish Sun, has surprised four of its top Scottish newsagents by naming them in The Sun’s Top 50 Retailers in the UK. The four retailers were recognised for their commitment to the category, for championing The Sun brand and for launching charitable initiatives to improve the lives of people in their communities. The four retailers were all named in the top 15 of The Sun’s 50 Top newsagents and received a surprise visit from The Scottish Sun bus, a full Sun re-brand including new Sun fascias and fittings along with a £250 donation to a charity of their choice.
The Top 50 Retailer campaign is marking The Sun’s 50th birthday along with a £1m year-long charity reader fund as the title celebrates “ordinary people doing extraordinary things”. News UK Head of Retail Marketing Chris Hughes said selecting a top 50 from 52,000 hard-working retailers was no easy task. He added: “The Sun 50 campaign, and its reader fund, is celebrating ordinary people doing extraordinary things and that’s exactly what our retailers have done. These retailers have all been champions of The Sun brand and proved to be a bastion of the local community. Thank you for all that you do.”
3) A Johnston & Sons, Dundee Muhammad Abid’s new-look store is one of the bestperforming independent newstrade stores in Scotland and continues to champion The Sun brand. His staff are happy to deliver to the homes of elderly customers, and raise thousands for charity each year. Fittingly, the £250 cheque for being one of the Sun’s Top 50 newsagents across the UK will go to three old folk’s homes near the store. 4) News Direct/Bridgend News, West Lothian Ian Morgan’s team – including 74-year-old paper ‘boy’ Peter McKay – start delivering the Scottish Sun at four o’clock in the morning, when his shop and distribution centre opens. The cheque will be spent helping to improve the Bridgend area around the store. Ian said: “I love what I do. It’s more of a vocation, rather than a job. We deliver over a thousand copies of the Sun each week.”
HOME DELIVERY
The next Tom Cruise? Not many people know that Hollywood actor Tom Cruise’s first job was as a paperboy aged 13. One youngster fully aware of that fact, however, is 16-year-old teenage actor Liam Scobie who is already following in the footsteps of the Mission Impossible star by working as a paperboy for the Sinclair Barr newsagents, in Glasgow Road, Paisley. Cruise famously discussed how his paperboy job taught him the benefits and value of hard work and young Liam is clearly cut from the same cloth, having already been chosen to appear in the next Outlander TV series. Liam has been filming in the popular time-travelling romantic adventure over several months along with stars Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughman. He said: “My dream is to be a successful actor. And maybe it’s a good omen that Tom Cruise was a paperboy like me when he was a teenager!”
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DECEMBER 2019 | SLR
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04/12/2019 14:57:09