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Call Sign occasionally meets up with some unusual people,
but Keith D'urso (M57) - the 's' is silent - has an unusual second job in
addition to driving a taxi... he is really Santa Clause!
Ok, so you don't believe us, but we actually saw him in his
full regalia driving a taxi with his DaC logo - but no sign anywhere of
Rudolph who Santa told us was still at home after being "totally
knackered" last Christmas Eve!
When Call Sign spoke to Keith, he was just on his way to see
his favourite reindeer and to make sure that his nose was the right shade of
red. "You can't have Rudolph the red-nose reindeer with a black
nose," Santa told Call Sign.
So is Keith D'urso really Santa Clause? "Well,"
said Keith, "I am one of his agents!"
And would does a DaC driver drive around dressed as Santa? We
all know that the real Santa lives in Rovaniembi in Lapland? The answer is
that Keith does it for charity and this is his fifth year...
"It started at a cab drivers cafe near Euston,"
he said, "when I bet some friends that I would drive around fully
dressed as Santa on Christmas
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THE SECRET IS OUT - SANTA DRIVES FOR DIAL-A-CAB!
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Keith goes to work dressed as Santa
Eve. I did it and it cost them a tenner each and in
total I collected around £140. So I decide to stick at it and put up a
collection tin for two weeks before Christmas each year with a letter
explaining which charity I was collecting for. For the first three years, it
was the Children's Hospital at Great Ormond Street and then last year I
changed to Dial-a-Dream, which is run by Tom Whitbread and a former DaC
driver Bob Heath. I've decided to donate this year's collection to
Dial-a-Dream again, because making sick children's wishes
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come true is such a worthy cause."
Keith used to buy his Santa suits for a fiver in Woolworth's
but they only lasted around 2 days before the bum part wore out, so he had
to buy a better quality one "specially imported from the North
Pole!"
How much does he expect to collect this year? Last year he
collected around £500 and he hopes it will be more this year. So far, each
year has seen a higher figure than the previous one. And what does his wife
Anne think about being married to Santa?
"She thinks it's a great laugh - although she has
warned me that while she 's happy to share her bed with Santa, the minute
she feels a set of antlers, she'll put her foot down!"
Keith has two grown up children and a grandson called Tommy. He
has been on DaC for two years and was on RTL for several years before that.
"But Mountview didn't believe in Father
Christmas," said Santa - sorry, Keith - "so I had to come
to DaC where everything is possible!
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