Our weekly round-up of interesting and outlandish information, collected from the corners of the charity sector.

Turnbull returns Trust fund

This column’s never really been a fan of BBC Breakfast, nor indeed the people who present programmes of its ilk. Diary can’t help but think that any human-being capable of both reading a teleprompter and being chipper at 6am is, secretly, an alien.

Which brings us, in a circular kind of way, to Bill Turnbull. After 15-years of sitting on that red sofa, Bill Turnbull is leaving his gig hosting BBC Breakfast.

Let us take a quick second, before we proceed, to remember perhaps his finest hour. Lest we forget that day last summer. That sultry day in July, when Bill Turnbull managed to inexplicably mangle the word ‘client’ into another, slightly shorter, much ruder, word beginning with ‘c’ on national television at four minutes to nine in the morning.

Good times.

Still, amongst all the fawning celebrations of his work and the tearful farewells, this column has found a rather less satisfactory Bill Turnbull story in the news this week.

Indeed, it’s come to this column’s attention that Bill Turnbull was paid over £5,000 to host the Pennine acute hospitals NHS trust’s staff awards night in 2015.

While Bill has paid the money back, it’s emerged that both Turnbull’s appearance fee, and another £10,000 worth of other entertainments, were all signed off by the Greater Manchester NHS Trust’s charitable funds committee.

Needless to say the Charity Commission weren’t entirely amused by all of this and has since opened a dialogue with the Trust.

This reminds Diary of another, NHS Trust funding balls-up from years gone by.

Devon NHS trust’s great and the good went swanning off on a freebie, black tie gala, while the rank and file were instead given four-finger discounts on a Kit-Kat each? When they were accused of being, basically, appalling managers and wasting money, they responded by saying that the Kit-Kats had been funded with charitable money. As if, in some incomprehensible way, this made it better.

Talk about trust issues. 

Tally-ho, Wilson to the fore!

Another week, another great example of government minister’s ‘priorities’. This week, Rob Wilson, our erstwhile leader and minister for civil society, has waded armpit deep into a bust-up in his native constituency of Reading.

Over what? Diary hears you ask. Is a belt and braces little local charity about to go under, and Rob can’t bear to watch anymore? No, not exactly.

He’s written to Historic England – a public body that is a trustee of English Heritage but, itself, not a charity – in an attempt to save the so-called ‘Biggles Building’ in Reading University. He’s gone as far as to say that the proposed demolition of the Pearson Court building is nothing short of an “act of vandalism”.

The university, on whose property the building resides, has said that it needs to demolish the building to build a redevelopment to house an extra 700 students.

This doesn’t wash with Wilson, who was obviously an avid reader of the Biggles books in his youth, and has decided that unlike his hero, the university's excuses just won't fly.

Free hugs on the free hug highway

Sue Ryder had a mixture of volunteers and employees stand in Victoria Station yesterday for, at least, 17 HOURS giving FREE HUGS to people!

Free hugs? Diary’s confused. How is giving free hugs helping people? You can’t make a difference with hugs, can you? You can’t cover staff costs, or charitable activities, or rent, or suppliers, or anything with hugs. Particularly not free ones, because they’re free!

Is this it? Is this the death of the fundraising team as we know it?

Will the proud and noble fundraiser slowly be reduced to little more than a fake, dead-behind-the-eyes smile and a pair of out-stretched arms? The cold marble of a London over ground station, the queue of commuters standing outside a Nero. 'Feeling blue?’ a fundraiser asks one person after another, ‘Fancy a free hug?’

In this currency-less charitable future, infectious diseases run rampant and hand-sanitizer sells at £50 a bottle.

The Daily Mail, it's won...