*****RAFFLED WITH AUTHORS PERMISSION PLEASE SEE TWEETS****** Steve Martin is your all round quintessential American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, and musician. Over his distinguished career he has earned 5 Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and was awarded an Honorary Academy Award at the Academy's 5th Annual Governors Awards in 2013 Among the many honours, he has received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humour, the Kennedy Centre Honours, an AFI Life Achievement Award. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Martin at sixth place in a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics. Steve can now add the accolades of being a New York Times best selling author with his book A Wealth of Pigeons with the amazingly talented cartoonist Harry Bliss. Steve writes “I've always looked upon cartooning as comedy’s last frontier. I have done stand-up, sketches, movies, monologues, awards show introductions, sound bites, blurbs, talk show appearances, and tweets, but the idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me. I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny. You can understand that I was deeply suspicious of these people who are actually funny.” This is a book of cartoons. Understandable, if one realises how life and fate have combined to send our way, one too many griefs, challenges, and for some the struggled to maintain equilibrium. This book is fun and filled with much needed humour. This has been a tough year for so many, might be nice to pass on a little humour. The book is brand new and unread, it comes with 2 signed bookplates, the original having been smudged during the signing at which point I tweeted to Steve about it and a new much improved unsmudged signed and doodled bookplate arrived on my doorstep, you can see from the pictures above the correspondence between myself and Steve on this matter. So where will the money be going, well it will be split many ways with the bigger cuts going to the following charities and whatever is left over going to smaller local charities. 1. From my hometown of Glasgow and the place I grew up comes the..... Three Hills Community Supermarket. This wonderful organisation run by real 'Glesga Mammies' will help to provide support via their Glasgow Community Supermarket which will include a shopping area, a community café and an advice hub. It will provide immediate financial relief for households on low incomes, by improving their access to affordable, nutritious food, while addressing some of the underlying issues which may have left them vulnerable to hunger. Named ‘Threehills’, the facility will serve the people of Priesthill, Nitshill and Househillwood as well as the greater Pollok area. This community spirited group aims to provide choice in shopping for food by supplying subsidised food in a normal supermarket environment, re-purpose high quality supplies which would have otherwise been sent to landfill and ease people out of poverty with dignity and respect, preventing the need to access the services of a food bank. Dignity and Respect for those in need something we should all strive towards. You can find a link to their information here: https://www.threehillsglasgow.org/ 2. American Years Revisited. In 2019 my father Senior Chief petty Officer Horace Vincent Silliman died on an American Airlines flight just before it touched down in Scotland. Without the help and support offered by Charles Witheroe and his band of brothers my father would not have had an Honour Guard at his cremation nor would my mother and I have known the wonderful friendship and kindness that they freely offered. The aim of the American Years Revisited group is to preserve the history and heritage of Dunoon and the wider area, in relation to the American presence from 1961 to 1992 and its impact on the community and the people involved. The group was formally constituted in 2018 and has developed with support from SURF’s Dunoon Area Alliance. You can find a link to their page here: https://americanyearsrevisited.wordpress.com/ 3. Home- Start Perth and Kinross My current local home run by the indomitable Jill Scobbie and her wonderful team. In 2020 it was my pleasure to get to know Jill from another fundraising campaign that I ran on Slow Cookers and the 'Buy a Kid a Coat for Christmas' Home-Start Perth and Kinross is a voluntary organisation committed to promoting the welfare of families with at least one child under five years of age. We’re there for parents when they need us the most, because childhood can’t wait. Based in Highland House in Perth, they are a small team who are passionate and dedicated about the work they do, along with their volunteers and the families that they support. You can find a link to their pages here: https://homestartperthandkinross.org.uk/ Any funds left over will be distributed to smaller local voluntary run charities providing relief to those hardest hit in our communities during this awful time where many are having to choose between eating and heating. Please give your support to this fundraiser and for the princely sum of £10 an amazing book that is hard to find anywhere for a decent price could be yours, all you have to do is be in it to win it!