Mr. Gregg Starr:

I thank everybody for their good wishes and support. The support from the whole nation has been fantastic. Somebody asked how our have families changed. The whole community around us has changed. We now have up to 100 people out walking every night. A friend of mine who owns the local Chinese takeaway gives out to me weekly for his loss of business. I keep apologising to him and say that is just the way it is and to get used to it. Our families and the whole town has changed. Everything has changed. People's attitude has changed. A group of people who walk during the day, walk every night also as a social activity. People are getting out of the pubs and are beginning to talk to each other. We live in a very small community, Borrisokane, which has a population of just over 1,000 people. There are people there who did not know each other. That would not have happened years ago. When we were younger, everybody knew everybody. Children got out, climbed walls, ran through the fields, swung off trees and did whatever children were supposed to do but children do not do that any more. There is a huge responsibility on parents.

My son, Eoin, is in the primary education system. The success of the "Be safe, be seen" campaign, is due to the wearing of high visibility jackets which are everywhere. There is also the seat belt sheriff campaign and the green flag campaign for the environment. Their success lies in educating the children and educating the parents, as primary schoolchildren bring everything home, good and bad, to the parents.

I had no idea of proper diet or proper control before the show started. The only exercises I knew were those I did myself. I stopped exercising and stopped watching what I was eating and stopped weighing myself because as a man I never did those things. I never looked at what my wife did. It was not until I stepped up on the weighing scales one day and saw that it registered 20 stone that I thought something had to change. We have to monitor ourselves, weigh ourselves and our children and educate children and parents on what we are eating. There is so much rubbish in processed foods. When one eats fresh, one stays fresh and one's life is fresh. I believe a good national campaign, which does not have to cost a lot of money, would help educate primary schoolchildren in moving and eating correctly. The children will bring home the message and the parents will move with them and will realise that what they are feeding their children is wrong. The five of us have always said we hope we can encourage people to get up off the couch, be they seven years of age or 70 years of age. That is what we are here for and that is the most important issue for us.