All for Charity....

Quite frankly, the only good thing about Sport Relief  is that if it is filling up our airwaves with celebrities imploring you to give money, then at least you can rest assured that Comic Relief isn't on.  As you've doubtless gathered over the years, I don't have much time for these celebrity-led charity drives.  I find the sight of overpaid TV presenters and singers imploring me to give money some worthy cause or other because they've just performed some feat I neither asked nor wanted them to perform, incredibly irritating.  I'd be more impressed if I saw evidence of any of them donating some of the millions they are trying to avoid paying tax on, rather than just their 'valuable' time.  Indeed, that's the worst bit - the patronising idea that we should be grateful, not to mention impressed, by the fact that some talentless pillock has deigned to give up half an hour of their time to stand in a bucket of custard whilst haranguing us about the need to make charitable donations (which are tax-deductible, so I'm surprised more of the bastards don't make sizeable contributions).

Until this year, I'd always thought of Comic Relief being the worst of the two alternating events - all those 'comedic' egos vying for our attention and trying to show how 'serious' and 'compassionate' they can be.  However, all the fuss we had in the press over an emotive Davina McCall, (the very epitome of someone famous simply for being famous), completing some Sport Relief challenge or other, despite having to surmount 'difficulties', has made me revise this opinion.  You would have thought she was a) a saint and b) had just climbed Everest or found a cure for cancer, judging by the gushing media coverage.  How brave she'd been!  How much money she's raised for those poor, poor people in Africa!  I'm afraid I found the whole thing exasperating - the idea that we should be in awe of some z-lister because they've completed some 'challenge', (fully supported by hordes of flunkies and TV crews, reducing the real risks to nil), that nobody forced them to do.  If she found it all so bloody traumatic then I'd suggest that in future she just put her hand in her pocket and make a sizeable cash donation instead. It would save us all a lot of hassle.

I know, I know, here I am disparaging an event seeking to raise money for worthy causes simply because I find celebrities irritating, but I just can't help but feel these events have more to do with allowing them to massage their egos than anything else.  Like I said, if they really wanted to help and to set an example to the public, why not just make a sizeable monetary donation?