Stratford Hedgehog duo to appear on children's television

THE incredible efforts of Stratford’s teenage hedgehog rescuers will be featured on children’s television tomorrow.

Schoolgirls Kyra Barboutis, 15, and Sophie Smith 14, run a hedgehog hospital which will be the focus of an episode of the series My Life at 3.55pm on Monday on CBBC.

Sophie and Kyra turned filmakers for the series, getting all the footage with the help of their mums, themselves as the pandemic prevented BBC crews from chronicling their work.

The episode will feature the amazing story, previously told in the Herald, of “miracle hog” Evie, brought back seemingly from the dead after she arrived at the hedgehog hospital cold and without a detectable pulse.

The film production crew kept in close contact with the girls during the filming to make sure they got all the shots they needed.

Kyra said: “It was great to see and learn a different side of filming. I now really love the presenting side of it all and it’s definitely something I would like to do more of in the future.”

Sophie added: "It was definitely different doing this as it was our mums filming and not a film crew. We had great time and enjoyed it although our mums were much stricter than other film people we’ve had before."

The CBBC show might now be in the can, but Sophie and Kyra are already putting their new skills into practice, filming a special presentation to be shown at the the Volunteer Expo Online on 8th May.

The girls had been invited to speak in person at the volunteer event at the NEC in Birmingham last year before it was cancelled because of the pandemic.