This week, Society Diary has mostly been watching football. But fear not, dauntless reader, for despite becoming engrossed in the permutations of who was going through in Group H, this column has not slept in its task to bring you the best news from around the sector.
This week's column has a distinctly animal-ish theme: The RSPCA rescue 82 dogs from a house in Birmingham, while Diary singularly fails to make a 101 Dalmatians joke; a cow embryo auction and man's best friend at a charity event. Plus some soup, although that may be vegetarian.
An 82 dog night
To Birmingham first this week, and a BBC story which really puts the ha ha in ‘chihuahua’. Because with no ha ha, it would just be chihu, which would be silly.
Yes, the good people over at the RSPCA were called out to the property in Birmingham after “police had raised concerns about conditions” there and found the place was veritably overflowing with little Mexican dogs - 82 of them to be precise.
This plethora of pups is set to be featured on an upcoming episode of Channel 5’s The Dog Rescuers. Yes, you’ve read that correctly, 82 separate dogs. A number of pups not hitherto seen on the nation’s screens since the last time 101 Dalmatians was inexplicably broadcast.
While some of the dogs were suffering from “matted coats and fleas”, the RSPCA said the “dogs had been loved”. The house in question was owned by two individuals who “had started out with two pets, but did not get the dogs neutered and, after four years, they had 82 dogs”.
Diary’s not going to even begin trying to crunch those numbers, but it would seem those dogs didn’t waste a minute when it came down to procreating.
RSPCA Inspector Herchy Boal is quoted by the Beeb as saying: "They [the dogs] literally started appearing from everywhere. We would move the washing machine and suddenly there'd be six faces looking at you. It was incredible where they were able to hide.”
"The house looked like an earthquake had hit it, everything was higgledy piggledy, it was really chaotic and dirty.
"We called out a vet who said the house was too hazardous and the dogs couldn't stay there, it was filthy and cramped. They were all hiding; barking and snapping at us."
The dogs have since been moved to the charity’s Newbrook Farm Hospital and are, by all accounts, doing well. In fact, four of the pack were eventually returned to the husband of the couple, whose wife had recently died.
Life can be Cruella with so many dogs in de Vil..la.
You do better.
Soup’s on
Now, Diary knows that it’s been seriously warm in the UK over the last few days and, as a result, the last thing you’re thinking about right now is soup but, the good people over at the agency of the same name have teamed up with youth homelessness charity Centrepoint and launched a new mass participation fundraising event.
It’s called, and Diary’s not making this up, the Big Broth. (It is not known whether people taking part will be called Big Brothers, although we rather hope so.)
Yes, the soup-based fundraising event is due to take place in November this year, raising money for Centrepoint. From what this column can gather, it has something to do with people making soup and, once those involved have tasted the soup, a winning soup will be chosen, produced and sold, and profits of those sales will then go to the charity.
Yes, this idea really takes the bisque-t. The Cream rising to the top. Gazpach-no idea how they came up with it but it’s really been well thought out. Definitely not goulashed together at the last minute. Diary wishes the initiative laksa luck. Miso sorry Diary can’t explain all of it further.
More soup-based puns were originally included in this column, but against Diary's protest, the number has been reduced.
Moo money, moo problems
To Northern Ireland now, and the news that cattle breeders have raised £22,000 for a boy fighting a rare illness by putting cow embryos up for sale.
The British Limousin Cattle Society hosted this unusual auction in Ballymena last months, the proceeds of which will be donated to the Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice.
Udderly magnificent work all round by the BLCS! Could this be the embryonic stage of an entirely new channel of fundraising? Moo knows.
A man and his dog
Finally this week, we turn as one to the trendier parts of East London, and Wednesday’s Charity Futures new report launch.
The report – To the Core – presents some interesting findings about donor psychology vis-à-vis core cost funding, penny in the pound spends, and so on.
Diary’s quite interested in all of that, but it's gone on the back burner for now, because the real news to use from that event came from the fact the Sir Stephen Bubb, formerly of Acevo and now of Charity Futures, has a dog, called Sparkles, which he bought to the launch.
Bubb was adamant that one of our scribes take some snaps of him with his canine best friend, both looking resplendent for the occasion.
The event was at a wooftop bar, appropriately enough.
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