Breaking your neck catching a cheese, and other charitable efforts that don’t withstand a cost-benefit analysis

ARE you doing something for charity? Does the effort and cost involved comfortably outweigh any money you might raise? Does that make you a cretin?  

Joining a cheese rolling race

Yesterday a 20-year-old woman risked her vertebrae to be the first to reach a seven-pound wheel of Double Gloucester rolled down a very steep hill. She then told press she didn’t like cheese and took part to raise awareness for Refugee Community Kitchen. Has she done so? Have donations rocketed? Could she not have just bunged them £100?

Running a marathon or triathlon or iron man triathlon

Most of us learn as children than sponsorship has a hard ceiling. If someone’s giving you a quid, they’re giving you a quid. Do twice as much and they’ll still give you a quid. Do an ultra-marathon and they’ll give you exactly the same as they would for a marathon or a half-marathon or a 10k or a 5k or for a fun run. So why not just do that?

Hassling celebrities for bullshit

Armed with a good cause, you begin writing emails. ‘Could David Tennant please donate a sketch for us to auction? It only takes a minute of his time but would mean so much’ to you, basically. Sure, it’ll be auctioned for charity and raise £80 except the winner never pays up, but it was anyway an excuse for you to bend the famous to your will.

Sitting in a bath of beans

How much did those beans cost? Oh nothing, they were donated by the manufacturers. They couldn’t have been donated direct to a foodbank? They had to be poured in a bath so you could soak your arse in them? This is your fetish, isn’t it? And you invite the world to watch while you sit there hard among the haricots, getting off on nobody knowing.

Any attempt to get in the Guinness Book of Records

Usually involves roping a whole bunch of pricks in. ‘Hey, let’s break the record for most people dressed as the Spice Girls having a picnic! It’s for charity!’ Technically. Actually it’s so you can gather glory to yourself and forever be known to the office as ‘that Spice Girls wanker’.

Anything abroad

Whether you’re walking the Great Wall of China, cycling through Namibia or bungee jumping from the Golden Gate bridge, you know the truth: if you’d given all the money you’ve spent on this to charity, they’d be a lot better off.