Emma Freud and Richard Curtis are moving their family to America - for a while at least.

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My year of saying yes: why Emma Freud and Richard Curtis are moving their family to the United States

In the first of her weekly diary entries chronicling her New York adventure, Emma Freud reveals how the plan was hatched and ponders what to do with the pets and her inlaws' ashes

By Emma Freud

6:40AM BST 30 Jun 2015

I’m starting at the beginning here. Richard, who I live with, co-founded Comic Relief and I am now the director of Red Nose Day – yes, I know, I literally slept my way to the top.

2015 has so far been a mighty year. In March we mounted our biggest Comic Relief campaign so far, where we passed a total of a billion pounds raised since the organization began 30 years ago. In May we held the first ever Red Nose Day USA, which was the single toughest campaign of our lives.

In September Richard is working on the launch of the new Global Goals with The United Nations.
I am definitely fond of my boyfriend (it’s been 25 years, though I still won’t marry him in case someone better comes along.) But the workload this year has nearly killed him, and I can’t pretend there haven’t been rows, because there have.

I know, you aren’t supposed to argue with someone who is busy trying to save a life or two - but what about the fricking school run? After a year of 16-hour working days and an average of 30 meetings a week things got a bit shouty (a lot shouty) and a radical change became inevitable.

One night he finished work at 2 am and we discussed it seriously. I said I’d love to become one of those families who do brave and amazing things – like living abroad and having adventures instead of staying up all night re-editing fundraising films about mosquito nets. Richard said he promised to stop campaigning once these three events were done.

"I don’t believe you," I said, quietly (it wasn’t very quiet).

"It’s true," he said, tentatively.

"Let’s move to America in September for a year then," I said.

“What?” he said.

"Say ‘Yes’," I said.

“Yes”, he said.

It was a deal.

As a result, in nine weeks' time we’re taking our two youngest children out of school, swapping our mobiles for cells, packing one large suitcase each, renting out our West London house and moving to the West Village of Manhattan for a year of saying yes.

As yet, I’m not quite sure what we’re saying yes to, so last week we wrote a list of 10 things we’d like to embrace in this grown-up gap year. It read:

1. In a town with 24,000 restaurants, let’s never go the same restaurant twice even if we love it.

2. Let’s try to become movie experts – go to old films, festivals, talks and debates, not just films featuring the complete oeuvre of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

3. We should embrace American sports culture – baseball, basketball, American football, bowling, hot dogs.

4. Let’s forget TV (too many adverts) and go to a lot of music concerts and comedy nights instead – the smaller the venue the better.

5. Let’s be brave about weekends, go to places like Vermont and Woodstock, stay with people we hardly know, make fires and do foraging or rummaging or snuffling or whatever it is they do there.

6. We should be a screen-free family every evening, even though the last time we tried this we lasted about 13 minutes.

7. Let’s rent an RV truck during a school holiday – drive somewhere, camp and try not to argue in it like last time.

8. Let’s definitely and definitively finally find out whether my brother’s American wife’s name is "Patty" or "Paddy".

9. Let’s form a family band and perform songs like Edelweiss without even a hint of irony.

10. And let’s say YES to almost everything that is suggested at almost all times.

I emailed it to the children and asked them to send us their responses. Bizarrely only one of them replied: it was the youngest, 11-year-old Spike. and he wrote one word - it was "No". Good start, I thought, something to build on.

The hardest decision has obviously been what to do with the pets. We have four children, a dog, two cats, two guinea pigs, two rabbits, about nine fish depending on the time of day you are checking their tank/graveyard and several hundred nits.

After endless discussions, we have decided to take our three sons with us (the fourth child has already left home), put the rabbits, guinea pigs and fish up for adoption, exterminate the nits and take the dog and cats with us on the plane as cargo. However one of the felines, Badger, has become something of a problem.

The airline has said it’s happy to have any animals in the cabin as long as they weigh 6kg including their basket. The dog and The Normal-Size-Cat are laughing – but Badger is a big lad: he’s closer in size to a puma, measures around twice the girth of our dog, and has very clearly eaten all the pies.

He’s currently coming in at an embarrassing 7kg without the basket, so he’s been put on a diet which has so far been entirely unsuccessful. Every morning he gets the cat equivalent of a small bowl of 
Special K. And I’m beginning to suspect every morning when he has finished his food he goes to each of my neighbours' houses and eats the entire contents of their fridges. They probably don’t stop him because they assume he is a puma and may be dangerous.

Less of a problem but still an issue are our books. The new tenants don’t want any of them in the house. I would happily send most of them to Oxfam (if I haven’t read them by now, I’m not going to) but the Curtises are sentimental and like keeping everything they have ever enjoyed.

We have shelves of unread novels, boxes of read novels, and skip-size storage trunks of yellowing newspapers each one kept for decades because it contained an article that had once been savoured.
Unfortunately I am no longer allowed to be in charge of book disposal since a day in 2002 when I gave to Oxfam a pile of books containing a first edition of Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, signed by the author. I admit it wasn’t my finest hour – I thought it just looked old and scruffy - but think how lovely it would have been for the purchaser who snapped it up for 50p.

We are also not sure whether to bring Richard’s parents with us. They currently live in a pair of urns in our study. His mum wanted to be sprinkled on the waters of the Varanasi, but we have yet to make the trip there. (NB we will never make the trip there).

And nobody can remember where my father-in-law said he wanted to be scattered so he is still residing in his urn. The current options are: they go into storage like our books (heartless); we donate them to Oxfam like the outgrown toys (weird); we leave them to be enjoyed by the new tenants in our home (weirder); we turn them into an hourglass or fireworks or paint or a diamond (those are all now a thing); or they come with us (insane).


I will let you know when an ashes decision is made because every week for the next 12 months I will be sharing the joys of this adventure: the horror on the face of my daughter who is a student in New York when she realises her parents are moving to within six blocks of her apartment, the rows about what (or who) to bin as we pack up the house, and the heated family debate about my decision to share the joys of this adventure with the readers of The Telegraph. It’s going to be an interesting year. 

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All about Richard Curtis - World Philanthropist - British Genius

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Perhaps the name Richard Curtis does not mean much to you.  Of course what could a person born in New Zealand and raised in England mean to Americans, unless you followed the legendary British TV favorites Black Adder and Mr. Bean, which he wrote.

Then there are the motion pictures including two of the three highest grossing movies in British history, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill.  Later he would write War Horse directed by Steven Spielberg.

Comic Relief’s total over 30 years passes £1 billion mark

16 Mar 2015 08:59

Howard Lake

Comment: 0

Tag: Comic Relief, Corporate, Events, Research / statistics

The fifteenth Red Nose Day raised £78,082,988 on Friday night, bringing the total raised through Red Nose Day and Sport Relief over the past 30 years to over £1 billion. The total stands at £1,047, 083,706.


The money raised since 1985 has helped over 50 million people in the UK and across the world’s poorest communities.

As you can see, Richard is also one of the most prolific fundraisers in the world raising over $1.5 billion through charities he started.

Richard Curtis

Biography

Richard Curtis CBE (born 8.11.1956) Richard Curtis is an award winning British TV and film writer. He is best known for directing Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill. He is also known for founding the British charity Comic Relief.

Childhood: Richard Curtis was bon in Wellington, New Zealand, to Glyness and Anthony Curtis. His father was a Unilever executive. The family lived in various different countries whilst Richard was growing up and some of his family still reside in Australia.

Richard has lived in England since he was 11 years old and he started school at Papplewick School in Ascot. He then won a scholarship to Harrow, where he became head of school. He later earned himself a first-class degree from Oxford University, in English Language and Literature. It was here that Richard Curtis befriended and started working with Rowan Atkinson.

Film & TV Career: In 1980, Richard Curtis co-wrote a Bee Gees parody entitled 'Meaningless Songs (In Very High Voices)'. Following on from this, he became a regular writer on Not The Nine O'Clock News, the comedy sketch show that featured Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith, Pamela Stephenson and Gryff Rhys Jones.

Curtis then started to work on Blackadder and continued to work on the series between 1983 and 1989. Richard worked once more with his old friend Rowan Atkinson, as well as Tony Robinson. Curtis and Atkinson went on to work together once more on Mr. Bean, between 1990 and 1995.
In 1994, Richard Curtis co-wrote The Vicar Of Dibley, a sitcom that starred Dawn French and also featured Liz Smith. The show was hugely successful and ran for 18 episodes and three 'specials'.

Richard Curtis started writing films in the late 1980s. His first major success came in 1989 with The Tall Guy. The film starred Jeff Goldblum, Emma Thompson and Rowan Atkinson. This was followed by Bernard and the Genie in 1991. Once again, Atkinson was a feature of the film, as was Lenny Henry.

In 1994, Richard Curtis achieved his biggest success to date with the release of Four Weddings and a Funeral. The film starred Andie MacDowell and Hugh Grant and was produced by Working Title Films. Other members of the cast include John Hannah and Kristin Scott Thomas. Curtis' next project for Working Title was Notting Hill, which was directed for Roger Michell starred Hugh Grant again - this time with Julia Roberts as the female lead. It beat Four weddings and a Funeral's record and became the highest grossing film of all time.

Richard Curtis was also involved in the adaptation of Bridget Jones' Diary. Curtis was already friends with the book's writer, Helen Fielding, before he began work on the screenplay. The film was a huge success and starred Renee Zellweger as the title character.

Curtis teamed up with Working Title once more to work on Love Actually. Once again, Hugh Grant played the lead male role and was joined by Emma Thompson, Bill Nighy, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth and Keira Knightley.

Richard Curtis received a Fellowship award at 2007's BAFTA in recognition of his work in film and in the charity sector. Later that year, he co-wrote an adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith's the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency with Anthony Minghella. Minghella died a few days before it was premiered on the BBC in March 2008.

Curtis then wrote and directed The Boat That Rocked. The film was set in the 1960s and documents the exploits of a pirate radio station located on a boat in the North Sea. The all-star cast includes the likes of Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Nick Frost, Kenneth Branagh and Gemma Arterton.

Charity Work: Richard Curtis helped to found both Make Poverty History and Comic Relief. He helped to organise the Live 8 concerts with Bob Geldof.

Personal Life: Curtis lives with the script editor and broadcaster Emma Freud, in Notting Hill. They have three children together.

Biography by Contactmusic.com

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Global Citizen's Festival, Concert, and Project Everyone - NYC September 26 - End poverty and hunger in the world!

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One of the most effective and aggressive efforts to mobilize people from throughout the world to help others will be launched in just six weeks beginning September 24 when the United Nations is expected to adopt a new set of Sustainable Development Goals to help bring poverty to an end in the world.

The leaders of 193 nations are expected to adopt the new goals for the United Nations, UNICEF, the Global Citizens Festival and Concert, and Project Everyone.  President Obama and Pope Francis are among the world leaders pledging support.  On September 26 the Festival and Concert will be held on the Great Lawn of New York's Central Park.

While the festival and concert will be streamed live around the world, an edited version of the concert with film inserts from around the world will air in a worldwide broadcast on NBC and BBC September 27.  Featured performers include international stars Beyonce, Cold Play, Pearl Jam, and Ed Sheeran.

The Coltons Point Times is proud to be assisting the Richard Curtis team in making this international effort a success.  

A new feature of the world initiative is the addition of Project Everyone to the international team headed by perhaps one of the greatest fundraisers for charitable causes in history, Richard Curtis.  As you will read in this article, Richard Curtis has raised over £1 billion through his charities the past 30 years.  For those of us in the colonies, that  translates to about $1.56 billion.

More about Richard in the next articles, here is the story of the efforts by the Global Citizens and Project Everyone.

Project Everyone was founded by Richard Curtis, filmmaker and founder of Comic Relief. This is why...

In September 2015, the United Nations are launching global goals, a series of ambitious targets to end extreme poverty and tackle climate change for everyone by 2030.

If the goals are met, they ensure the health, safety and future of the planet for everyone on it. And their best chance of being met is if everyone on the planet is aware of them.

So the simple but mighty ambition of Project Everyone - is to share the global goals with 7 billion people in 7 days.

How We Do It

Our mission is to get a short, dynamic and snappy explanation of the global goals onto every website, TV station, cinema, school, radio station, newspaper, magazine, billboard, newsletter, noticeboard, pinboard, milk carton and mobile phone.

The more famous these global goals are, and the more widely they are understood by everyone - the more politicians will take them seriously, finance them properly, refer to them frequently and make them work.

This is a mission for humanity, unified goals that resonate with everyone, everywhere.

Our partners in this mighty plan

Project Everyone is partnering with Global Citizen. Global Citizen is a content, events and campaigning platform for the movement to end extreme poverty by 2030. The objective of Global Citizen is to increase the number of individuals engaging with the global goals, and provide a platform for the NGO sector to increase support for their policy and campaigning objectives. By connecting tens of millions of people to global issues, inspired global citizens take action and generate support for the organisations campaigning to end extreme poverty by 2030.

Our Founding Team

Richard Curtis

Richard Curtis is a film writer and director, responsible for films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Mr Bean, Love Actually, The Boat That Rocked, About Time and most recently Trash and Esio Trot.

In the other half of Richard’s life he is co-founder and vice-chair of Comic Relief, which he started after visiting Ethiopia during the 1985 famine. He has co-produced the 14 live nights for the BBC since 1988 and the charity has made over £1 Billion for projects in Africa and the UK during that time. In 2015, he will bring the massively successful Red Nose Day to the United States with NBC.

Richard was a founding member of Make Poverty History and worked both on that campaign and on Live 8 in 2005. As part of his contribution to the MPH campaign he wrote The Girl In The Cafe for HBO and the BBC - a television drama based around the G8 summit, which won 3 Emmys. In 2012, Phillip Noyce directed Richard’s TV movie “Mary and Martha”, a film about two mothers losing their sons to malaria. It has been shown in 50 countries around the world and used as a campaigning tool by many organisations committed to ending malaria.

Kate Garvey

Kate is a strategic communications and campaigns consultant specialising in promoting global campaigns and issues. Clients and campaigns have included Google; the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games; Product (RED); Live Earth; The Global Fund; UNHCR; the Maternal Mortality campaign; Make Poverty History and the Live 8 concerts. Her career began in politics where, from 1997 until 2005, she worked for Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street in the Prime Minister's Private Office and played an integral role in 3 successful election victories. Kate was also a director at Freud Communications.

Gail Gallie

Gail Gallie is a business leader with a strong sense of social purpose.

Gail’s background is in marketing and advertising. She has worked for both advertisers and agencies, in the public and private sectors.

Gail started her career working for ad agencies, helping to create campaigns for a variety of clients including P&G, the Ministry of Sound, and the Labour Party. She then took a role in marketing at the BBC and over the next eight years was responsible for the strategy and delivery of many major projects, including the launches of CBeebies and BBC Three.

On leaving the BBC Gail co-founded the strategic communications consultancy GaillieGodfrey, delivering corporate campaigns and brand strategy to a mixture of commercial and philanthropic clients, including Sony Music, the Camden Roundhouse, and the Millennium Cities Initiative. During this period Gail also worked as a freelance consultant for Comic Relief.

In 2010 Gail was appointed CEO of the ad agency Fallon, part of the Publicis Group, delivering campaigns for clients including Cadbury, Eurostar and Skoda.

 Amanda Mackenzie

Amanda was a member of Aviva's Group Executive for 7 years and joined Aviva to oversee the rebrand from Norwich Union and to set up a global marketing and communications function.

Amanda has a BSc in Psychology from the University of London, is a graduate of the Insead Advanced Management Programme, a Life Fellow of the RSA and Fellow and past President of the Marketing Society. Amanda has over 25 years of commercial experience, including director roles at British Airways Airmiles, BT and British Gas. She is also a non-executive director of Mothercare Plc. and sits on the audit committee.

She has been on the board of the National Youth Orchestra for 8 years. Amanda is a member of Lord Davies steering group to increase the number of women on boards.

Amanda was awarded an OBE in the 2014 New Year Honours List for services to marketing.

Amanda has joined the Project Everyone team on a 2 year secondment from Aviva.

Join the world’s largest team

Support for the Project Everyone campaign is growing across the globe, so please don’t hesitate to ask more about what we are doing or how we might work together to make the goals famous. Everyone will thank you for it. To learn more about Project Everyone contact
team@project-everyone.org

Citizenship

How Project Everyone will talk to 7 billion people

By Brandon Blackburn-Dwyer on June 26, 2015

In weeks the United Nations General Assembly will hold a historic meeting that will shape the next fifteen years and beyond. Yes, the UNGA meets every year. So what makes this year so special? Stay with me, this story is getting good.

Back in 2000 the UN developed the Millennium Development Goals, a list of 8 goals that were designed to improve the world. Among the MDGs successes was cutting extreme poverty in half. This success was great but it still leaves a lot of work left to do.

Now, the world has a chance to get the job done. The Global Goals, or as policy folks like to say “The Sustainable Development Goals”, are the roadmap to ending extreme poverty and solving climate change by 2030. What will be key to their success, however, is ensuring people know about them, so that world leaders are held accountable.

That’s where Project Everyone comes in. According to the campaign’s website, it’s mission is to share the Global Goals with the world’s 7 billion people, all in the span of 7 days. Sounds crazy, right? Check out the video above to see behind the scenes of this ambitious campaign and see how Project Everyone’s going to make it happen.

Citizenship

Everything You Need to Know About the SDGs

By Natalie Prolman on Jan. 30, 2015

Image via Wikipedia

From now until September, you are going to be hearing a lot of dialogue about the “SDGs” (aka: the Sustainable Development Goals) and how they will be dictating the roadmap of development for the next 15 years. You may be asking yourself..wait, what are those??

Good question.

Long story short, the SDGs (think of them as phase II of the Millennium Development Goals, except even better...we hope) are a universal set of goals and targets that UN member states will be expected to use in framing their political policies and development agendas from now until 2030. These goals are going to be essential in ending extreme poverty and creating a future free from inequality and dangerous climate change. Super important stuff!

Because I’m sure you’re as excited as I am about these SDGs, I figured it would be helpful to break them down for you and explain why you should care. And most importantly, how you, global citizens, can get involved.

So, back in June 2012 at Rio 20 (the UN Conference on Sustainable Development that took place in Brazil) countries agreed to establish an intergovernmental process to develop a set of "action-oriented, concise and easy to communicate" sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The main objective? To help drive the implementation of sustainable development. In September of this year, these goals will be made official. Let the countdown begin!

After Rio, a 30-member Open Working Group (OWG) of the General Assembly was tasked with creating a proposal on the SDGs. It was agreed that they must be: action-oriented, concise, easy to communicate, limited in number, aspirational, global in nature and universally applicable to all countries (while taking into account different national realities, capacities, and levels of development as well as respecting national politics and priorities).

Here is what they have come up with so far: 

1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere
As global citizens we can all get behind this one!

2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture
It’s not just about getting food on the table. We need to make sure that everyone has access to healthy, nutritious and affordable food!

3. Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages
As my girl Michelle likes to say, let’s move!

4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
In other words, we have to make sure that people from all backgrounds, regardless of their socio-economic status, age, or geography have access to quality education. Like this awesome lady!

5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
My bff Emma Watson is all about this.

6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
Let Raya from Sesame Street break this one down for you in this helpful intro.

7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
Yup. Sounds good to me!

8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all
All too often people are forced to work under grueling, dangerous conditions for very little pay... this needs to change.

9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation, and foster innovation
If you don’t have safe roads, you can’t get essential things (like vaccines) to the people who need it most! Right?

10. Reduce inequality within and among countries
Talk about a no-brainer.

11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
Who doesn’t want clean streets?

12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
This year let’s commit to the mantra of reduce, reuse, and recycle.

13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts (taking note of agreements made by the UNFCCC forum)
YES!

14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
THINK ABOUT NEMO!

15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification and halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss!
It's time for global leaders to show off their green thumb.

16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
Peace, inclusivity, and justice for all. Triple win.

17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development
It’s time we all start working together!

Okay, so now you’re probably asking yourself why should I care about all of this?? As I mentioned before, 2015 is going to be a pivotal year in refining and establishing the SDGs. Once they are put into place, this will be THE framework that determines what sustainable development will look like for the next 15 years. Everything listed above is still tentative.  

From now until September, global citizens have a chance to stand up and collectively raise their voices to make sure that this development agenda represents the needs of those who are most vulnerable. Over the next eight months we will provide plenty of information to educate you on these issues and offer concrete actions that you can take to play a part in making history. We’re all in this together, and with such ambitious goals it's our responsibility to stay informed and do our part! Stay tuned!
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Thank you to the readers of the Coltons Point Times around the world

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As always we like to acknowledge the faithful and new readers to the Coltons Point Times and thank you for sharing our world.  Next year will be the tenth anniversary of the CPT on the Internet.

Double click on picture for full view of video.

This has been a wild decade as we continued to remain faithful to our promise to you to never allow advertising, to never collect names and emails, and basically to never violate all your rights to privacy like most other web sites.

The top ten countries for readers of the Coltons Point Times shifted slightly the past week.

Only two English-speaking countries made the top ten.  United States readers were about 60% of the total while Russia came in second with over 28% of the readers.

Here is the new ranking based on total readers per country for the week:

1.       United States

2.      Russia

3.      France

4.      Germany

5.      United Kingdom

6.      China

7.      Ukraine

8.     Portugal

9.      India

10.  Philippines

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