Society Diary: The ongoing fallout from David Beckham’s email hack

10 Feb 2017 Voices

Oh Becks, sweet Becks. Up on the South Downs, having a Becks. That's the dream, ain't it?

Another week has come and gone dear friends and, lo, Society Diary rides once more to bring you the latest from the sillier side of the charity sector. This week, Diary’s goes deep into ‘Beckileaks’, and Peter Lewis backs down from the ultimate fundraising challenge. 

Do not go gently into that good knight

What exactly David Beckham means to the people of the United Kingdom has long been debated. He is many things to many people. Gifted footballer. Handsome man. Poster child of the 90s. One half of the UK’s hottest power couple. Charity ambassador. Underwear model. Man of a thousand hairstyles. Father. Husband. Hero. Villain. Golden Balls. 

Yes Becks is a chap who wears a lot of different hats, so to speak. What he is not, however, is a knight of the realm. And, after this, it seems fair to say he might well never be one. 

It has emerged in the last couple of weeks that David Beckham was a little bit, well, miffed that he missed out on a knighthood in the New Year’s honours list. 

Beckham’s emails were hacked – in what we will now be referring to only as ‘Beckileaks’ – and released on the website Football Leaks. And they make for some pretty interesting reading. 

The former England and Manchester United captain reportedly called the honours committee “a bunch of unappreciative c***s”, ranted about Katherine Jenkins being given an OBE - “a f***ing joke” - and seemingly refused to use his own money to fund his charity. 

Indeed the Sun newspaper went so far as to essentially claim that Beckham’s work with his own foundation, as well as his ambassadorial work with Unicef, were solely for the purpose of getting himself knighted. 

Beckham and his people have vigorously denied the claims, with a spokesman saying that the story “is based on outdated material taken out of context from hacked and doctored private emails from a third party server and gives a deliberately inaccurate picture” of Beckham’s charitable work. 

Is this the end for the UK’s love affair with David Beckham? In other words, can Golden Balls bounce back? 

For its part, Unicef has come out in defence of Beckham, saying it’s incredibly proud of the work that Beckham has done for the organisation since he became an ambassador all the way back in 2005. 

Foul-mouthed email tirade aside, Diary’s pretty sure that the Beckham brand will definitely pull through this awkward phase. He's definitely had a bit of a knightmare though. 

Who’s who? 

Yesterday was Fundraising Live, Civil Society Media’s flagship fundraising conference, and by all reports a merry day was had by all and sundry.

The day had everything a fundraiser could hope for: inspirational plenaries, power networking opportunities, free buffet food and coffee, and a whole 45-minutes given over to publicly venting about the state of fundraising self-regulation. 

The ‘Meet the Regulators’ panel saw incredible scenes right from the off. Richard Marbrow, group manager for corporate governance at the Information Commissioner’s Office, kicked off proceedings by informing the gathered fundraisers that he was late “due to a trainspotting enthusiast getting a little too close to the train he had intended to spot”. 

Opening with a joke about what is, at best, a serious injury. Is this thing on? Oh, tough crowd…  

Marbrow’s day didn’t exactly improve when one of the fundraising faithful got a spontaneous round of applause for questioning whether the ICO had any intention of “holding other sectors to the same standards it holds the fundraising sector”. 

Oh yes, jolly japes had by all. 

Diary’s colleagues in the CSM marketing department also came up with a fun (and informative) little game for all the budding fundraisers out there. Called ‘who’s who’ – it called on fundraisers to correctly pair nine pictures of prominent fundraising directors with the logos of the organisations they work for. 

Those undertaking the game would then be timed and enshrined for posterity on a leader board. 

Diary’s fundraising reporter colleague absolutely destroyed the competition, posting a Usain Bolt-worthy time of 16.40 seconds. He was pretty pleased with himself, despite the fact he had something of an advantage in the game given that it’s, well, his job to know who all of these people are. He's literally paid in English pounds to know this sort of information. 

Be that as it may, Diary’s sources say that Peter Lewis, chief executive of the Institute of Fundraising - a man whose job it also is to know who fundraisers are - quailed in the face of such an imposingly impressive time. 

“I’m being diplomatic here and letting him win,” he reportedly said, also citing the fact that he’d barely just got back from a work sojourn in Canada and was jetlagged. 

How convenient… 

Also, fun fact, at one point the #fundraisinglive was trending nationally on Twitter, somewhere between #CharityToday and #NationalPizzaDay. Both a fun, and delicious, fact. 

Thanks again to all who came and contributed to make yesterday's Fundraising Live conference a success. Much love!

 

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