THE Gazette's petition to save Wiltshire Air Ambulance was signed by people attending a beer festival at the Rose and Crown pub in Worton.

The Rose and Crown's landlord Matt Bungay and his partner Charlotte Dawson are backing the Gazette's campaign to keep the Wiltshire Air Ambulance in the county.

They are grateful to the Wiltshire Air Ambulance and its staff as it flew their ten week old son, Kallum, to the Royal United Hospital in Bath after he was found not breathing, but Kallum could not be saved and he died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome last October.

The beer festival, held on Friday night and the weekend, featured 22 real ales and attracted about 800 people from as far afield as Swindon and Salisbury.

Customers were entertained by tribute band The Mangled Wurzels and other bands Private World, The Liquid Badgers, Get This and Inconvenient Truth.

Raffle prizes included a Swindon Town shirt signed by footballer Lee Peacock, a football signed by Southampton footballers and a cask of beer.

About £350 was raised from the raffle and this will be split between the Wiltshire Air Ambulance Appeal and the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths.

Retired ambulanceman Dennis Overton has collected more than 1,000 signatures for our appeal to save Wiltshire Air Ambulance.

Mr Overton, 70, of Hilperton, and his wife, Beryl, have raised thousands of pounds over the years for the Wiltshire Air Ambulance Appeal and say the air ambulance should continue its joint working with the police.

The Great Western Ambulance Service (GWAS) wants to sign up for only one or two years with the shared Wiltshire Police helicopter while it carries out a clinical assessment of air cover in Wiltshire, Avon and Gloucestershire but the police want to renew the contract for five years from this December.

The Wiltshire Air Ambulance is funded entirely by donations from the public and needs to raise £350,000 a year to keep it flying.

Mr Overton worked for Wiltshire Ambulance Service for 31 years. He said: "I can't understand why GWAS can't sign for five years to carry on the Wiltshire Air Ambulance with the police. The clinical assessment is a smoke screen."