Pressganged: a look at the media and social care

Celebrites, can we live without them? Newspapers and TV are full of them: their love lives, drug disorders, alcoholism and general paparazzi attracting antics.

And the TV fuels this by “discovering” new celebs to build up and then burn at a later date, for example Jade Goody.They are even ranked: A, B and even C, which invites the intellectual put down that “Ms/Mr X would be c-list in the Cyrillic alphabet” (wherethe C is in the same position as S).

So celebs have to keep the media onside. Charitable work adds shine to the halo and charities benefit from the publicity, so a win-win situation.


But dangers lurk. Last month, Charityfair 2008 saw the launch of “Patrons, Presidents and Personalities“, in which author Eileen Hammond warned about the dangers of a poor match of celebrity: “charities fail to take a strategic approach to choosing the right personality believeing that anyone will do, just as long as they are famous.”


Coming up we have Jodie Kidd’s celebrity golf tournament to raise cash for disadvantaged children, featuring those mainstays of the fairways, Tarbie and Brucie. Jodie was joined by her namesake Jodie Marsh to donate clothes to Refuge’s Big Wardrobe auction earlier this year. While Amy Winehouse went starkers for breast cancer, along with the equally beautifully barneted Helen Bonham Carter.


And last week, the Children’s Trust enlisted the help of pop band Girl’s Aloud to do a free concert at Sandown Race Track.


But the Brits are put in the shade by their US counterparts when it comes to charity work. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are the golden couple of charitable works with a shopping list of good causes they help.


Who would be the UK equivalent? Go to the Look to the Stars website for a peek at celebrities charity work.


 

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