What to do when you’ve cooked stew for 400 football fans, but the match is cancelled?

The manager of The Red Lion in Barnes – Angus Mckean – had arranged a homemade beef and ale stew for a charity football match that was to be held on the pub’s neighbouring pitch.

Unfortunately, due to Sunday’s snowy weather, the football match was postponed.

After hearing the news, Angus took to Twitter to contact local charities and shelters to see if they could make good use of the stew.

After help from the Twitterati, the stew was split between two charities, Glass Door and Dads House.

Vicky Laurence, who works with Glass Door at Rivercourt Methodist Church in Hammersmith, said: “It was absolutely fantastic, we heard about it through Twitter because of the power of social media.

“Normally we do a chicken roast with vegetables, but it was nice to give guests a choice and we froze some of the meat we’d already bought. It saved us a lot of money.

“We had 80 portions of stew, it was really good, there was rosemary and generous amounts of beef - the guests loved it.”

Up to 35 people sleep at the church, which is a lifeline for vulnerable rough sleepers in these freezing temperatures.

Although tempting aromas filled the air Mrs Laurence was too busy to sample any stew herself, but everyone said it was delicious and there were many requests for second helpings!

She added: “The Red Lion were fantastic and Angus was wonderful, he even had it delivered by taxi to us which saved us having to organise transport.”