Tags
baking, Cameron, charity, Comic Relief, David, Downing Street, kitchen, One Direction, One Way Or Another (Teenage Kicks), poverty, Samantha, single, Tony Blair
Comic Relief should be about this – helping children across the world to have a better life through laughter-based events (these were with Ewan McGregor in Africa in 1999). It’s not about giving more publicity to media-savvy politicians.
I hate to be a party pooper but the revelation that Samantha Cameron had donned a red wig and entered the Downing Street kitchen to raise cash for Comic Relief with a bit of baking filled this columnist with dismay.
It was a fake, cynical, publicity-minded set-up that deserved to be ridiculed rather than tolerated. It stank. And it did the comedy-based charity no credit whatsoever.
How many people rushed to their telephones to ask whether Mrs Cameron would get a segment in the telethon itself – so they would know when to switch off?
Did nobody stop to think that the sight of the Camerons’ fully-equipped contemporary kitchen, reported to have cost £25,000, might be offensive to those of us who can’t afford such luxuries as a Magimix blender (£299), a £130 toaster or a £895 dishwasher?
The real giveaway was the PR-speak that we’re supposed to believe came from the head of the Prime Minister’s appendage wife: “Baking is such a brilliant and easy way to raise money for Red Nose Day,” we are told she said, in exactly the formulaic way that PR people like to write such things. “I know the children are really looking forward to selling our cakes around the offices in Downing Street.”
To staff who had already been told they had to buy, one would imagine.
It’s bad enough that somebody thought David Cameron should be included in the video for this year’s charity single – entitled ‘One Way Or Another (Teenage Kicks) and performed by One Direction. Admittedly, Cameron likes kicking teenagers, and always in only One Direction – down.
Not a good advert for the cause.
It never could have been. The hypocrisy of the situation is staggering. Here we have the Prime Minister who has done more to increase poverty in the UK than anyone since Thatcher, posing as somebody who cares about the plight of the destitute.
It’s despicable and I won’t be having it on my television.
When will these politicians – along with their spouses and, in this case, the bosses of Comic Relief – realise that appearing on charity events is a bad idea? First they alienate everybody who disagrees with their political stance – more than three-quarters of the country, in Cameron’s case. Then they alienate everybody who despises hypocrisy (as explained above).
It isn’t worth it.
For the sake of balance, allow me to add: I hated it when Tony Blair did a turn, and at least his sketch had a certain amount of wit about it.
