Naughty but nice: Cork strips for a good cause

NAUGHTY in the name of good, the latest nude calendar to hit the market is a fresh take on the advice to grin and bear it.

Beaming and baring it all for a great cause are 56 volunteers from various parts of Cork who willingly posed in the buff to help raise funds for Cystic Fibrosis (CF) patients.

Musicians, welders, bikers, Brown Thomas – none could resist the persuasive powers of Caroline O’Leary, mother of two little boys, Cian, 8, and Arron, 6, who have CF. Caroline, who for the past four years organised the 65 Roses CF fundraising ball, decided 2011 needed something new and she came up with the idea for the risque calendar.

“They are flying out the door. I’d say we’ll have to print more. If we sell all 2,000, we’ll have raised €20,000,” Caroline, from Ballinhassig, said yesterday.

The photoshoots were “great fun” she said. “We even got a romance out of it, a pairing that developed in the wake of a naked biker shoot.”

Levity aside, Caroline is utterly serious about raising funds for an isolation unit for CF patients at Cork University Hospital (CUH) where children with CF regularly stay in the general paediatric ward despite the high risk of cross-infection.

“The CF nurses are brilliant but they have no facilities. There are times when patients have to be seen in the nurses’ small office,” Caroline said.

Her charity, Cork 65 Roses, has donated more than €140,000 towards the Build4Life fund, set up by friends and family of CF patients in Cork and Kerry and dedicated to raising awareness about CF. which has the highest incidence rate in the world in Ireland and one of the lowest life expectancies. Build4Life has raised €1 million towards developing a dedicated CF treatment unit at CUH, but Caroline said despite this, there was an incredible amount of red tape to cut through before the unit can go ahead.

Caroline is determined that it will. “There is a 10-year difference between life expectancy in the Republic and in Northern Ireland, because of facilities, and that is crazy,” she said.

lTo find out more about the calendar log onto www.dozenposes.com