Orkney islanders shell out for charity after shop owner's Easter egg-cess

For the owner of a small shop on a small island, Dan Dafydd's mistake was a big one and left him with a dilemma: how do you get rid of 80 cases of Easter eggs when you only meant to order 80 eggs?

- Aneesa Ahmed

For Dafydd, the owner of Sinclair General Stores on Sanday, one of the Orkney islands (population approximately 500), the 720 eggs were enough to feed everyone almost twice over. A few too many even for those with a sweet tooth.

So, in a Willy Wonka-style stroke of genius, Dafydd ran a competition to let one person win 100 of the spare eggs all in aid of charity.

As of yesterday afternoon he had sold more than 3,500 "raffle squares", raising over £3,000 for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). He has also sold all the excess - or egg-cess - chocolate and has had to order more crates owing to popular demand.

Dafydd said: "We actually took a delivery of eggs yesterday because we ran out. We needed to buy more in the end. We've been posting eggs all over the place. People have wanted them signed and all sorts.

It's been an interesting week." It wasn't just the competition that proved a success. Nestlé, which manufactured many of the 720 eggs, is teaming up with Dafydd to raise more money for the RNLI.