It’s Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday, and everybody’s waiting for Society Diary to begin. This week in the land of satirical charity content we ask how many bodybuilders it takes to sit on a fundraiser. And some other stuff.
Muscle madness, indeed
How many bodybuilders does it take to change a light bulb?
A six pack.
Diary learned a variation on that joke yesterday, though. How many barrel-chested, bow-legged, shaven-headed, distinctly northern body-builders does it take to wrestle a fake charity collector to the ground and sit on him until the police come?
Anywhere between five and eight, according to CCTV footage.
At its elephant heart and rippling core, this is a good news story. A glistening, sweaty beacon of hope in a world otherwise full of hard Brexits, rampant climate change and Jeff Sessions. A bloke with a fake charity collection tin tried to rip off a bunch of massive men in the North of England and, having phoned the police, a whole bunch of said massive men decided to make a citizen’s arrest on said bloke.
Just watch the video. It’s great.
Other things which are incredibly good about this story: 1) the gym where the drama took place is called ‘Muscle Madness,’ 2) it’s in Sheffield, 3) the guy who runs the place is called David Grubb and, if the Mirror’s pictures are anything to go by, he looks a bit like what I imagine Jason Statham will look like in another 15 years or so: more wizened than rugged, but still, undeniably, gloriously, bald.
Grubb told the Mirror: “When he came in I put his arm behind his back and a few of the other lads held him down until police arrived. It was quite shocking, the adrenaline was pumping – but he chose the wrong gym”.
Indeed.
The gym has also now started its own fundraising page for Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice, the charity which this faux-tin rattler was pretending to fundraise for. They’ve already raised £200. Fair play to the lads!
Anyway, Diary’s going to go and do some chin ups in honour of the proud, brave, and generally enormous men over at Muscle Madness. One… one…
No, still looking for one.
Ladybird’s for Grown-Ups does charity
Can you cast your mind back, dear reader, to a time before 2016? Or has the thought of Nigel Farage's triumphant face, gurning ecstatically behind a pint of slightly flat bitter, caused you to forget everything that occurred?
All of Diary’s pre-2016 memories are hazy and somewhat smudged, like sepia-toned thumbprints in fresh ink.
Anyway, around Christmas time 2015, Ladybird printed out a bunch of little ‘For Adults’ books, with camp, jolly little fonts and illustrations that harked back to those old sort of Enid Blyton books but, ‘humorously’, were all about more modern subjects like ‘Hipsters’ and the looming zombie apocalypse.
They were, essentially, quaint and easy stocking-stuffers for middle-England. The ultimate upper middle-class accompaniment to any forced, yuletide merriment. They must be the most Tory thing to happen in publishing since William Shawcross wrote his four million word love letter to Queen Elizabeth, the queen mother.
Diary would bet that 9 out of every 10 downstairs loos and/or ‘snugs’ in Surrey would have at least one of these books in them, forever unopened, let alone read. Just sitting there, gathering dust, amongst the black and white photos of dad’s rugger team and the cheaper watercolours that never quite got hung in the sitting room. A series of garish, hard-backed testaments to man’s capacity for cruelty to his fellow man.
Anyway, Ladybird have teamed up to do one for Comic Relief, so that’s something.
As long as Ladybird’s ‘The Do-Gooder’ comes out only a third as offensive and damaging as this column’s personal favourite mini-voluntary sector hardbound book of recent times (Charity Sucks, obviously) then it will be considered something of a success.
Also £2 out of every £7.99 will go to Comic Relief, which is good.
Burns, baby, burns!
Nick Davies, the much loved policy bloke in charge of public services at NCVO, is leaving to pursue his dreams of getting his policy wonk on somewhere else. Diary doesn’t know all the finer details, but still wanted to wish him well.
Davies has been a vocal and avid reader of this column and Diary can only hope that continues at his new home. Indeed, this column hopes he can convert a few of his new friends and spread the love… although quite how it’ll catch on in a different sector remains to be seen.
Davies' contributions to Diary are varied and immense: chiefly a signed photograph of his cat, and the finest set of sideburns the voluntary sector has to offer.
Anyway, like Dick Whittington, Davies and his cat are off to seek their fortune elsewhere, and we wish them well.
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