00:00 You're all cool, you're all cool, and everybody's cool, but redheads are cool.
00:05 Question, what did Fergie say to trigger giggles?
00:09 Answer, "Ew, what's that down your front?" I went, "It's horse slobber."
00:13 Hang on a minute, isn't that Fergie? She appears to be in a school.
00:22 And what have we got here? She's now in a mosque? She's now in a football stadium.
00:27 In fact, she appears to be all over this place.
00:30 And she's even feeding me my lunch.
00:33 Howdy girl, Duchess.
00:35 Fergie is, of course, Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York,
00:39 and still technically, you know, part of the royal family, sort of,
00:43 but, you know, it's all a bit complicated.
00:46 But she's also very much her own woman, and she has come to Burnley.
00:51 Yep, you heard that right, Burnley, in a bid to help the town with its obesity issues.
00:57 So here she is at a school.
01:00 I came to Burnley because I've decided that Burnley is the cool place to be.
01:06 Who, hands up, who agrees with that?
01:09 I lost my mother at 11. She didn't die in the car crash until later,
01:13 but she left to live in Argentina.
01:16 I didn't want to tell Mum I was unhappy, because I thought it would hurt her.
01:19 So I obviously ate my feelings, and that's when I became a compulsive eater,
01:24 and food was my best friend.
01:26 It caused me to write my latest young adult book about mental health around food eating disorders.
01:32 Not to put too fine a point on it, Burnley has a bit of a weight problem.
01:37 75% of its residents are classified as either being overweight or obese.
01:44 Burnley is in fact the 10th fattest place in the UK.
01:49 Now Fergie has made it her mission, her mission, to help the town with its issues,
01:54 and what she's going to do is draw on her own experiences.
01:58 I had an eating disorder from the age of 12 through to probably joining Weight Watchers when I was 35.
02:06 Recently Fergie has been working with Dr James Fleming.
02:09 Now he's a local GP, and he's the founder of the Green Dreams Project.
02:14 That tackles social problems, and frankly it's a really big job.
02:18 Using their Fresh Food initiative, Dr Fleming and his team are aiming to steer people away from junk food.
02:25 Now that is a big ask.
02:27 This is the beginning of my big work of supporting Dr James Fleming and his work, and what he wants to achieve.
02:34 And that key message begins in schools.
02:39 But still there's this really big overriding question. Why Burnley?
02:44 Well, Fergie's relationship with the town actually begins during the COVID-19 pandemic,
02:51 when she had seen this BBC video which had gone viral on social media,
02:55 which showed just how hard up the residents of Burnley were.
03:00 And so what did she do? She reached out.
03:03 I went and rented a trailer, and I went out and I bought sleeping bags, I put blankets, I put presents,
03:10 I put anything that I would want if I was freezing cold on a winter night.
03:15 And since then, fair play to her, she's actually kept up her involvement, her relationship with the town.
03:21 So, fair enough.
03:23 Actually, to be frank, rather rudely, I think I invited myself back.
03:27 However rude she may feel it is, Fergie's presence in Burnley seems actually pretty well received by everyone she meets.
03:34 And she is undeniably having an impact on the town and its people.
03:40 And then say, we are very happy!
03:44 We are very happy!
03:46 [Music]
03:50 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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