Telethon was a well-known televised fundraiser that screened annually from 1975 until 1993. Occasionally, people from the Deaf community, including hearing allies, such as Bruce McHattie in this particular episode, were involved in the Telethon.
Bruce was a well-known advocate of the Deaf community from the late 1970s onwards. In the previous Telethon, the 1981 Telethon, Bruce McHattie worked 24 sponsored hours which raised $800,000 towards communication services for Deaf people, most of which went towards establishing the Teletext service.
For further interesting information on sign language in the New Zealand Telethons, have a look at https://signdna.org/feature/telethons/
Please note this clip has poor audio quality which has made captioning this video difficult. If anyone has a copy of this with better audio quality, please get in touch with us!
