AROUND 300 guests raised more than HUF 12 million for children’s charities on Saturday, 24 January 2004 at the seventh annual Budapest Burns Supper.

Highlights at the event, held for the first time at the Corinthia Grand Hotel Royal, included the world champion Shotts and Dykehead Pipe Band and the dance troupe Steps of the Celts, but also entertainment from children treated at the Second Department of Paediatrics of Semmelweis University Hospital, one of the principal beneficiaries of money raised over the past six years. The address to the haggis was this year given by Norrie Sinclair, but in a break from the norm, Nicola Reynolds presented the Immortal Memory to Burns in the form of a song.

(A version of this article first appeared in The Budapest Sun in early 2004)