You're right, I've got a lot of explaining to do. What sort of time do I call this etc? Well, I'm sorry. I'll get round to writing about those missing two months of blogs at some point. Anyway, can't we just let the past be the past, especially when it's in the name of charity.
Tonight is Children in Need. A very worthy event, and a time when all of us should stick our hands in our pockets. I mean, to donate.
Over the years I've been at the forefront of fundraising. No, they didn't send me to Africa with Lenny Henry or anything like that, just that I've always been in jobs where promoting charities is super important.
Hence the picture on the right. Yep, that's me dressed as 'Arty Beat' to help launch the British Heart Foundation fundraising at a previous job. It wasn't supposed to be me. The bloke in question got stuck in traffic so, with 5 minutes notice I was asked if I would step into Arty's shoes. His enormous shoes that make every step feel like you've got children hanging off your ankles. Obese children at that.As I was bundled into the shoes, red leggings and finally the actual heart bit, the woman from the charity told me "Remember, you can't say anything.". To which I replied "OK." and she immediately got angry and said "NO! You can't reply". To which I found my only way of communicating was to simply wave my hands around, my hands which were now giant foam gloves that felt like I had a turkey on each fist.
Anyway, I spent the next 10 minutes standing next to the CEO of the company I worked for, whilst he made a speech and I had to stand next to him and look interested. Quite hard to emote from inside a giant muscle on legs. I found shifting from foot to foot and occasionally putting my hands over my mouth did the job. In fact, that was pretty much all I could do - cover my massive mouth up. I then spent 10 minutes whilst people came up to me and tried to talk to me. No-one knew who I was, so under the cloak of anonymity I got mischevious. Following people around the office, doing basic admin tasks like photocopying, going in the women's toilets - that sort of thing.
Eventually the real mascot man arrived and I was taken into a room to be 'de-hearted'. When they took the costume off I was sweating like never before, feeling that I was actually having a coronary - ah, the irony.
Anyway, that was the most extreme thing. The same year, I made up my own face to look like Pudsey bear for a photoshoot. I daren't show you the picture as I can't draw, let alone apply stage make-up, so I looked less like Pudsey and more a clown who'd been involved in a massive industrial fire. Still, it got in the paper.
As did the final thing I arranged. And this is something I really am NOT proud of.
One year I saw a date in an online charity calendar called 'World Food Day', so I decided we'd support it and do a photoshoot. So I arranged for three people to dress up - an Englishman in a bowler hat with a sausage on a fork, a girl in a stripy jumper with a french baguette and a chap in a sombrero with some mexican food. Lovely, great picture, celebrating world food, fancy dress, bit of fun.
Except, it turned, out, World Food Day was actually a day about raising awareness of starvation in the world, and how we shouldn't waste it. So a photo of three national stereotypes laughing with food probably wasn't the best thing to send to the local paper was it?
