Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Petersfield's gap-year boost

Melissa Bufton-Tufton is seen here helping out the needy in Petersfield

Petersfield is hoping for an economic boost as applications surge from affluent foreign students to spend their gap year helping the downtrodden in the town.

Applications started flooding in when a leading Roman Catholic cardinal described Britain as 'a third world country', and Petersfield was pinpointed following the BBC's decision to film a Boys From The Blackstuff-style documentary about the unemployed in the area (see Badger story).

"I was going to spend my year off in Timbuktu helping one-legged orphans learn to use an iPad, but since I heard about this desolate outpost of poverty in East Hampshire I knew at once I had to offer to fly in," said Osama Bin Loaded of Riyadh.

Even Melissa Bufton-Tufton, of Monks Orchard, has put off her Cambridge degree course in managing a paternal trust fund to help out in her home town after getting 37 A* grades at Bojangles School.

"It's great," she said. "I'll be able to improve my CV without travelling to some awful place in Africa where I might not be able to plug in my straighteners. I'll be mostly doing community work - waitressing at Pizza Express and stuff like that."

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