Fran Smith, Ellen Harris, Nathalie Renaud, Leyla Rathour and Alice Walters at Elizabeth House

AT Highbury’s Elizabeth House Community Centre, all they want for Christmas is… blue kitchen roll and washing-up liquid.

It might be an unconventional wish list, but these “boring gifts” are the things that help the charity keep its lights on and doors open to more than 400 children and adults every week.

This December the team at Elizabeth House in Hurlock Street, Finsbury Park, are appealing to Islington residents for donations to help fund all those ordinary bits and bobs, including paper, pins, electricity bills, and insurance.

Community leader Alice Walters explained: “It’s everything we need to use every day but we just can’t write into a fundraising bid. They are costs that we as an organisation are expected to cover, but it’s really difficult because they’re going up.”

Director Nathalie Renaud, who has run the centre for nine years and estimates that they spend up to £200 per week on blue kitchen roll, told the Tribune the idea for a “boring gifts” campaign was inspired by fundraiser Christina Poulton, who set up a “Boring Fund” to help small charities with behind the scenes costs.

Ms Renaud said: “The idea is that if we can have money towards our operations, we’ll be able to deliver our services. So buying washing-up liquid means we can do our cooking club with the children, or our over-50s lunch club.”

Elizabeth House’s version of the boring gift campaign includes comedic social media videos of team members excitedly tearing off wrapping paper to reveal the likes of teabags and toilet roll – much to their delight.

As funding sources decline and charities feel the squeeze, the team are hoping their Highbury neighbours will chip in for their not-so-boring backstage necessities this Christmas.

Ms Renaud added: “Islington is a very vibrant borough in terms of the number of charities and community groups, which is amazing. But there are so many of us here that some big funders are saying Islington has been overfunded.

“But with individual donations we can sustain regular services, which are what our members come for. When we’ve tried that in the past we had such an amazing response of people who wanted to support their community centre. So this year we thought, let’s try again.”