Nation's favourite bunch of four-year-olds unite with older people for Christmas special

Old People’s Home for 4 Year olds will be returning to our television screens once again for an hour-long Christmas special, with a surprise visit from Alfie Boe.

The special episode will see the elderly residents of Lark Hill Village reunited with their favourite children following six months apart to organise a Christmas party.

The heart-warming reunion will involve shopping for the party, sending out invitations and taking part in a tea dance.

Channel 4 said: "With social isolation being one of the biggest problems for the elderly, and never more so than during the Christmas period, we make a festive return to the Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds to continue the story of the older residents and their 10 young friends.

"Series 2 saw strong friendships develop including Ken and Lily ‘Bobtail,’ Beryl and Scarlett and Pauleen and Ismail in the specially-built nursery at Lark Hill village near Nottingham, with both groups making significant improvements during the 12-week experiment.”

The Christmas reunion tasks the two groups with an important project to help raise awareness of loneliness at Christmas. Together, the residents and children will organise a Christmas-themed dinner for 10 new friends from Lark Hill and the wider Nottingham community.

The festive episode will also show the children explaining their feelings ahead of moving on to “big school” while the elderly residents reminisce about the Christmas season “back in their day”.

For 87-year-old Ken Pidcock, the festive period is particularly hard after his beloved wife, Barbara, died in 2013.

“I never wanted to celebrate Christmas after that," he said. "I became a bit of a hermit, I suppose. I hardly went out for two years. We had made a lot of friends together, and I didn’t realise how much I had depended on her for my social life."

However, this Christmas has been turned upside down with the help of his four-year-old friend Lily. In moving scenes, the widower heads to the toy shop to pick out the perfect present for the youngster.

Thrilled to welcome Channel 4 back to Lark Hill Village, Mick Laverty, chief executive at The ExtraCare Charitable Trust, said: “We’re eager to see if spending time with the children continues to have the same positive impact we witnessed first time round.

“We were overwhelmed by the positive response to the series which ended earlier this month and excited by the results of the experiment. It is for these reasons that we are committed to supporting intergenerational opportunities and have pledged to continue working with the nurseries to the benefit of more of our residents and the children involved.”

The original programme was filmed over a 12-week period earlier this year and saw a nursery set up in the ExtraCare Village, which houses more than 420 residents. The aim of the experiment was to prove that both young and old could benefit from spending time in each other’s company.

Old People’s Home For 4 Year Olds at Christmas will air on Channel 4 on Wednesday, 12 December 12 at 9pm.

click here for more details or to contact Lark Hill Village