POPPY Appeal organisers say this year’s collection in York has got off to a strong start in the wake of continuing casualties in Afghanistan.

Steve Edgar said he hoped the amount collected in the York area for the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal this year might beat last year’s total of £148,000.

He said collecting tins had been distributed to hundreds of shops, pubs and offices across the city and he had already received calls from some saying their tins were full and asking for more. He thought regular news reports of soldiers dying and suffering injuries in Afghanistan over the past year had focused people’s minds on the need to help servicemen and their families.

The appeal will run until Remembrance Sunday on November 14, but another boost for the fund will come this Sunday when the annual Festival of Remembrance is staged at York Theatre Royal.

Festival organiser Ted Griffiths, who recently won the York Community Pride Person Of The Year award for his work for the Legion, said he would be struggling to get to the event after recently having had to go in to hospital with pneumonia. A theatre spokeswoman said 635 tickets out of about 800 had already been sold. The festival, which will start at 7pm, has raised more than £100,000 for the appeal over the years.

The Heavy Cavalry and Cambrai Band will top the bill on Sunday with marches and showbusiness numbers, and also be backing singer Janina Sweetenham, who will raise the roof with Rule Britannia and Land Of Hope And Glory. Children from Sheriff Hutton School will recall memories of wartime evacuees.

They will also join York Ladies to perform The New Seekers’ I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing.

To buy tickets, go to yorktheatreroyal.co.uk, phone 01904 623568 or visit the box office.