We CAN salvage something from that shameful night: The loot
AYEAR ago I spent a grim afternoon trying to sell The Big Issue on the streets of London. It didn’t go well, but I learned a lot. Nobody wants to fork out the price of a cappuccino to give a leg up to the homeless – some will actually spin on their heels to walk 100 yards in the wrong direction at your approach.
I earned about £12 in three hours, and that’s only because I shifted my pitch from Covent Garden Tube to The Lady building nearby and people in on the joke (I used to edit The Lady, boom boom!) stumped up a few quid.
And my point? It’s bloody hard to get people to hand over their cold, hard cash for charity unless they’re either drunk, or showing off, or both.
Which is why I refuse to regard the dickie-bowed fat-cats who attended the now-legendary Presidents Club gala dinner at The Dorchester as evil ‘perpetrators’, nor the young women who hostessed for them as the passive ‘victims’. That’s far too simple.
Admittedly, the organisers of this distinguished revel failed to notice that the year is 2018 rather than 1988, and that the #metoo and #timesup movements are sweeping all in their paths, but they went ahead with the sleazy adult-themed men-only thrash anyway, and 130 tall, thin and smokey-eyed young females were duly engaged to ‘entertain’ the paying guests until the small hours.
If they didn’t want to wear a tight, slaggy black bandage dress, sign a non-disclosure agreement, agree to the lock-in (all clear warnings that something epically ghastly is about to go down) and take the fee of £150 plus taxi fare home, well… we still have ‘agency’, and the ladies should have perhaps made their excuses and left. But they didn’t.
As for the gentlemen, I don’t agree that anyone who attended the dinner should be hung, drawn and quartered in a public place (even though there was a clear warning against sexual harassment in the night’s brochure itself, another klaxon that the event was an infamous gropefest).
We should feel pity, not rage for saddos who get their kicks from waving their willies/wallets in hotel banqueting suites while sticking their hand up a young woman’s skirt. Pathetic. The Presidents Club dinner was a repellent event – for goodness sake, it was even advertised as such – and I’m not saying it wasn’t. This is not the agreed narrative, I know, but can we please save our mock moral outrage for the real victims here: the sick children who were intended to benefit from such splashy acts of black-tie largesse, from now to eternity.
Two hospitals are already returning large donations from the Presi- dents Club. Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) is not only returning its most recent fat cheque but ALL previous donations, saying the source is ‘unacceptable’.
This is not only mad virtuesignalling, but also sets an impossible precedent for all charities to henceforth kitemark donations as kosher, and will make life harder for the whole sector (just attempt to define ‘unacceptable’).
THE Financial Times broke the story and is certain the money should be paid back. ‘Charities are returning the funds the club raised, a sad but necessary decision,’ the Pink ’Un opined. ‘Fundraising is built on reputation.’ I disagree. How on earth can keeping the money be worse than sacrificing the health of children on the high altar of political correctness? Fundraising is built mainly on shaking down donors by whatever means possible (believe me, it’s hard, I’ve tried).
The Presidents Club dinner was appalling, it was outdated, overtly sexist – just as ‘unacceptable’ as GOSH says – but its activities weren’t illegal. So bank the dosh, GOSH, and any other hospitals – and please let that be the end of it.