In his first public appearance since collapsing from exhaustion last week, President George Abela yesterday warmly thanked the Maltese for the thousands of messages of support he received.

Dr Abela visited the Lufthansa Technik hangar in Luqa, which has been transformed into a huge television studio for the annual fund-raising event L-istrina on Saturday.

It was Dr Abela's first day of work after he was ordered to rest by doctors following his collapse on Friday during the funeral of entrepreneur Angelo Fenech.

His long working hours over the past weeks, coupled with the shock at Mr Fenech's sudden death, who was a very good friend of his, were said by his office to be the main reasons for his collapse.

Dressed warmly in a sweater and a shirt, Dr Abela was shown around the hangar and watched in amusement as one volunteer tried to walk across a set of foam pillars in a pit while being hit by bouncing rubber balls. He stopped to speak to workers and volunteers who have been working non-stop on the set for the past few days.

"L-istrina is just around the corner waiting for us. I have already seen this hangar before and I'm not noticing any difference because we took up the space of a plane," Dr Abela said jokingly.

He had words of praise for the work done on the set, especially for the main stage, which occupies half of the hangar. Dr Abela even compared it to the iconic Ariston stage used for the Italian San Remo song festival.

"This is a unique set. The main stage is enormous and we insisted that all the available space be used," he said.

He also stopped to try out one of the many phones that will be ringing on Boxing Day and spoke to one of the technicians testing out the equipment.

This is Dr Abela's first edition of L-Istrina, which has been re-vamped under his leadership and for the first time ever there will be no prizes for people who donate money.

He has poured his soul in the event and even organised a seven-kilometre run that lured a record 6,000 joggers.