Communicating by letter still works. Aaaarrrr!

I couldn’t resist this one.  Great story in the news today about how a letter, written by a pupil in a South London primary school, resulted in a very unexpected celebrity dropping in to her school assembly.

Nine-year old Beatrice, a fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, wrote a letter to Johnny Depp, inviting him to visit her own ‘bunch of pirates’ at school and offering ‘copious amounts of rum’. Aaaaarrr.

Result?  Johnny Depp turns up at their assembly, in full Captain Jack Sparrow regalia.  Much fun was had by all.

I can’t remember school visits being as exciting as this.  I think a lecture by explorer Sir Ranulph Twistleton-Wickham-Fiennes topped the bill (don’t we British have the most amazing names?), followed closely by author Gerald Durrell.  The point of all of this, though, is the power of the written letter.  Email is alive and well in the 21st Century, and letter-writing fading, but in Beatrice’s case it worked.  Well done Beatrice.  Never stop writing.

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