Ricky Tomlinson appeals for son's photo to be returned
Ricky Tominson, star of The Royle Family and Brookside, has urged thieves who stole his car to return a photo of his son that was inside. He had been in the middle of cleaning out his property, and the car was full of items with great sentimental value.
He told the Liverpool Echo that he had been clearing a cottage ready for his granddaughter to move into. He'd packed items into the car, and was driving through Liverpool City centre on Saturday afternoon when he decided to stop off at a pub, the Green Room. He put his keys down on a table and went into the toilets. When he returned, the keys and the car were gone.
There were a number of items of sentimental value in the black Vauxhall Astra (registration number DG11 PNK), but he is most concerned about a photo of his eldest son, Clifton.
Clifton died in 2004 at the age of 33, and Tomlinson told the Echo that this was one of just a few photos he has left of him.
Anyone with information can call police on 101 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
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Tomlinson's experience goes to show that often it's not the most expensive items that we value the most. A study by Lloyds last year revealed that seven in ten people said that they valued seemingly worthless items with sentimental value just as much as their most expensive items. When asked to name the most important sentimental item in their house, the most common answer was the family photo album.
The top ten included items with their own value, such as wedding and engagement rings, but also things that wouldn't fetch a penny second-hand, including childhood books and teddy bears.
What can you do?
These items are irreplaceable, and if disaster was to strike, and you were to lose them, there's no way that the paltry insurance payout would help heal the wound.
While all you can do with old toys and books is make sure they are stored carefully, there are ways to protect photographs. If they are held digitally this can mean backing them up on the cloud, or a portable hard-drive held somewhere separate from the computer.
If they are physical photographs, it's worth taking the time to copy any particularly special photographs - whether that's getting specialist to copy them, or taking a photo of them and storing that digitally.
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