Amid all the gloom of rising beer prices and falling sales, there is one event that is guaranteed to warm the hearts of even the most cynical publicans - Children in Need.
The annual Friday-night schmaltzfest where desperate BBC presenters show just how game and benevolent they are by indulging in cringey ‘entertainment' skits under the guises of raising money for a ‘good cause' has become a particular low-light in what I guess the BBC must claim as evidence of its PSB commitment.
While I'm sure that there are some decent and well-meaning people involved in the Children In Need organisation and that some youth organisations have benefited from funds raised, I personally find the whole TV event totally cloying, mawkish and forced. The pub is therefore a much more attractive option.
Among the ‘good causes' for which funds have been raised, it has emerged, is a school in Leeds which funded and shared premises with a bookshop that radicalised young Muslims and where two of the 7/7 bombers worked.
After the phone scandal, where callers were incorrectly charged when trying to donate money, and now this, isn't it time that the BBC did what ITV did over a decade ago with its Telethon and put Children in Need and Pudsey out of its misery?
