Why do so many otherwise kindly people hate Children in Need (BBC1, last weekend)? We truly believe in helping needy children. We are genuinely pleased to discover that this year it raised £20.3 million, which is almost as much as last year, in spite of the recession, and which amounts to nearly 34 pence for every man, woman and child in the country. Actually, I chucked £2 into a collecting bucket on the Tube on Friday last, which makes me six times as generous as the average British person!
We also like Terry Wogan. I think he is a national treasure, being one of the few disc jockeys who gives the impression of having read a book — or even several. I like the way he was sucking a sweetie when he introduced a young American woman called Taylor Swift, who apparently is the biggest-selling singer in the world. American celebrities go through life surrounded by adoring sycophants, so it probably did her good to be introduced by a man sucking a sweetie. It would have been even better if he had been smoking a roll-up, but you can’t have everything. And if Ms Swift was feeling hard done by, she got an enormous round of applause just for reading out the Children in Need phone number, so at least the audience coped with any self-esteem issues she might have had.
No, I think it’s the smugness of all these celebrities, no doubt performing for free, but getting publicity no amount of money could buy. It’s the way we are invited to aah and coo over decent, generous people in their various workplaces who have worn silly costumes, held raffles, auctioned kisses and done goodness knows what in order to parade behind a giant cardboard cheque for an amount that would pay a middle-ranking BBC executive for approximately 3.7
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