i Editor's Letter: Why I'm giving up chocolate for January

I'm taking part in Give It Up for GOSH to help raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital, and anyone can join me

'So I surrender this fix for a month because I want to contribute something, however small, to the extraordinary work of GOSH, and to show solidarity with the kids there who are forced to give up many pleasures that we take for granted' (Francois G. Durand/Getty Images)

Happy new year. The blank pages of 2016 sit open before us. Tennyson, master of the one-liners, wrote: “Hope / Smiles from the threshold of the year to come.”

I’ve never bothered much with New Year resolutions, but this January is different. A cackle (the collective noun) of newspaper editors – myself, Amol Rajan of The Independent, Lisa Markwell of The Independent on Sunday and the Evening Standard’s Sarah Sands – are using our New Year resolutions to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital. And so can you.

We want to help create a new specialist unit for children with heart failure, among other goals. So as part of our charity appeal we're launching Give it Up for GOSH, and encouraging any readers so minded to give up a luxury for January in return for sponsorship – or to back friends and family.

My own piddling effort is to give up chocolate for a month. To give you some context: if I don’t stop eating so much chocolate to fire me past deadlines I will become a) diabetic, and b) Augustus Gloop, the ill-fated glutton from Willy Wonka’s tour of the chocolate factory. Indeed, as a child I wanted to emulate Roald Dahl and become a chocolate bar tester.

So I surrender this fix for a month – much to the amusement of colleagues – because I want to contribute something, however small, to the extraordinary work of GOSH, and to show solidarity with the kids there who are forced to give up many pleasures that we take for granted.

If you would like to help, you can set up your own fundraising page here: gosh.org/giveitupforgosh. Or if you can spare a few coppers, I’d be grateful for any donations to my effort here: justgiving.com/OliverDuff. Every single pound will help – and the Treasury will double your money because George Osborne raided Libor fines to boost our Give to GOSH appeal.

I’ll send a tenner’s sponsorship to each of the first 20 i readers who get in touch with their JustGiving link. (o.duff@independent.co.uk) Thanks a lot for your support for our campaign so far.

The team here at i wish you happiness and health for 2016.

To set up your own Give It Up for GOSH sponsorship page go to: gosh.org/giveitupforgosh. To sponsor Oliver go to: justgiving.com/OliverDuff

To Give to GOSH go to: http://ind.pn/1Mydxqt

To find out more about our appeal and why we're supporting GOSH go to: http://ind.pn/1MycZkr

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