Rita Fitzgerald receives a hamper

THE scriptwriters of the Christmas Day episode of EastEnders had soap’s most famous pensioner Dot Cotton eating her dinner with only a stray cat for company, having pulled her table cracker herself.

It may sound like a bit of watery-eyed fiction but the truth is that too many pensioners find themselves isolated and feeling alone during the time when the rest of us are toasting the season. And, while they are understandably wary about having their names in the pages of the New Journal, we found several real life Dots in the run-up to Christmas right here in Camden as we planned our annual festive hamper deliveries.

Hamper delight at Henderson Court

In the week before the big day, we toured the borough handing out hamper boxes paid for by the generous donations from our readers. The gifts, part of an appeal we have run for 30 years, are a way of making sure as few people as possible feel forgotten – nobody should be sitting alone with just their cats on December 25 – at this special time of year.

The Castlehaven Community Centre helped get the hampers out to derserving people

Thanks to your help – and next week we will make sure everybody who made the appeal such a success gets a special mention in print – we were able to make a bumper number of stops. We also visited people who have suffered hardship in 2016 and single-parent families doing their best to get by on pennies each week. There were visits too, due to the enormous response from readers, at luncheon clubs and community centres where the gifts of hampers, stocked with festive goodies, added an extra sparkle to the annual Christmas party. Again, it was the readers who helped direct us to where our deliveries would be most appreciated, and so off went our own Santa, looking suspiciously like community campaigner Ceri Thomas, to make some surprise doorstep deliveries.

Our Santa on the doorstep bore more than a passing remblance to Ceri Thomas

The smiles on the faces of the recipients are always another firm reminder as to why we raise the money each year, even when we know budgets are tight. In a way, the fact people give so generously now, when every penny counts, is all the more special.

There were warm thanks too at Age UK’s centre at Henderson Court in Hampstead when we dropped off treats there – a resource centre which provides a range of activities, from Tai Chi to ­bingo, for anyone aged 60 and over. We’ve also been to the luncheon clubs at the Highgate Newtown Community Centre and the Queen’s Crescent Community Centre, and the Hampstead Seventh Day-Adventist Church in Haverstock Hill, a way of helping the hard-working organisations who do so much to care for some of the borough’s older residents.

A stop at the Hampstead 7th Day Adventist Church

Mrs Brogan gets a special visit

Helping out with the deliveries were Camden cab company Addison Lee, who provided a sleek sleigh (four wheels, no reindeer) to help us get the pile of hampers out to where they needed to go, and for our stops in Camden Town, staff at the Castlehaven Community Centre helped pass some of the boxes on to deserving people.

Ray Atkins, 70, a retired residential care home supervisor, received one of your hampers and asked the New Journal to pass on his thanks to all those who contributed.

l Next week’s edition will list the kind donors who made all of this possible. PLUS more details on where we stopped on our hamper deliveries. Thank you, once again, to everybody who donated.