GIMME... SHELTER
Peter Andre paid thousands for charity busk
Should celebs be paid for charity work?
I bet it made you feel good, helping those who are less fortunate than you MARGARET APAP FAN WHO MESSAGED PETER ANDRE
IN an ideal world, would every celebrity donate their fee for a charity campaign to charity? Yes they would.
But often celebrities won’t do something without getting paid because it takes a lot of their time and energy.
And if I were Peter Andre and a company approached me and said they will give me money to busk on the streets for charity, I’d say: “Yes, sure”.
It’s probably all negotiated through his agent anyway.
But we also must remember that a lot of these charity
campaigns that involve celebrities are not just good for the charity, they are also very good for the celebrity because it can raise their profile.
Take Live Aid, for example. Please don’t tell me that the celebrities who took part in that were being completely altruistic by being seen on live TV raising money for charity for free because they were also doing very well out of it themselves. PERSONALLY I’d never take a fee to do charity work and most celebrities I know wouldn’t either.
You do it because you want to help that charity. If you are a really high profile celebrity who earns a lot of money, even asking for expenses doesn’t seem right.
However, in my position, where I don’t have a lot of money, I can’t afford to do anything that will put me out of pocket.
That’s why I will be returning to pantomime this Christmas, as the Wicked Queen in Snow White! Earlier this year I was
asked to attend a charity event in Torquay, which I would have been delighted to do, but I couldn’t afford the expenses and had to tell them I couldn’t do it.
They came back and said they’d pay for my travel and hotel, but that didn’t feel right to me, as I would have been taking money out of the charity.
So I suggested they find a local celebrity and that’s what they did. PETER Andre was paid thousands to busk for 15 minutes in a charity fundraiser that raised just €295.
The former I’m A Celeb star won wide praise for “taking time out” to perform hits such as Mysterious Girl for Shelter.
But we can reveal the singer was paid an eyewatering sum by a building society for the pop-up gig on the streets of London last month.
He has since claimed that nine days after the performance he voluntarily gave a “substantial” amount to Shelter, which is fighting soaring homelessness on our streets.
After the gig Andre, 44, a former husband of Katie Price, tweeted: “Absolutely brill busking in London for @shelter in support of the homeless.” Fans hailed the star a hero calling him “so lovely and kind”.
Margaret Apap said: “What a truly wonderful thing to do, I bet it made you feel good, helping others that are less fortunate than you.”
Karen Mozart added: “It only takes one person to make a change.”
Two weeks later Andre tweeted again about the event but said he had been working with Nationwide, which was campaigning to get people to give via mobiles and debit cards.
The €295 collected was from electronic donations and by Nationwide staff at the gig wearing T-shirts showing a Shelter logo and a smaller reference to the building society.
Andre’s performance will reignite the debate over whether stars should be paid large sums for charity work. Last year there was outrage when it emerged celebs are paid to appear on charity editions of popular TV quiz shows such as Pointless and The Chase. Sometimes they take home more than they raise for their
chosen good cause.
SECRET
In 2015 it emerged Made In Chelsea star Alexandra “Binky” Felstead was paid €3,300 to front a campaign for kids’ charity Barnardo’s. She later made it clear she was yet to be paid and asked the charity to keep the money.
In a video released two weeks after the event, Andre said: “By doing a secret gig on the streets like this and using mobile payments to make it quick and easy for people to donate, we managed to raise hundreds of pounds from people’s kind donations in a matter of minutes.”
Last night his representatives tried to play down his payment for the homeless charity event. They said he had given to Shelter and “he supports six or seven chosen charities and does everything for them free of charge every year.”
They added: “It’s a shame that a paper doesn’t pick up on any of the things he does completely free and gives so much time to helping people.”
Nationwide said: “As part of our wider promotion of Samsung Pay, the latest smartphone payment service, we demonstrated how customers could transact using their handsets rather than cash.
“Research we conducted showed that people would give twice as much to charity if they used mobile payments.
“We teamed up with Peter Andre as a spokesperson for this campaign.”
Shelter said it paid no money to the star and was grateful for the donation.
halina.watts@trinitymirror.com