TWO fat ladies are back in the Harold Thorpe Gardens after the Walcot Charity Shop and Library donated a replacement bingo machine.

The shop in Sussex Square, which tries to support the Walcot community whenever it can, purchased the £160 machine after hearing about how the old one needed replacing.

Peter Mallinson, the chairman of the Walcot Community Charity Shop, said: “They asked if we could help with a new bingo machine and then we looked it up on the internet and ordered it and it came the next day.”

The library and shop is one of the few in the country to be run entirely by volunteers, and is a lifeline to many in one of the country’s most deprived communities.

Peter said: “The ethos of the shop is that we are a charity shop which is one of the cheapest in the town by far, and that all the money we receive after paying our overheads gets fed back into the community at some point. We are run entirely by volunteers so there are no staff to pay, and we only have to pay the bills.

“We do what we can to help the community. if someone comes in during the winter and needs a coat and can’t afford to pay for it, we give it to them. And the money we do raise goes towards supporting local projects.”