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

Why can’t we have a prime minister like this?

So there’s a new prime minister in Canada, Justin Trudeau, and no one has paid any attention whatever to anything he’s got to say. Instead, the attention all seems to be on his charity work.

What charity, you say?

Unfortunately, no one seems to have the slightest interest in that, either. Instead, everyone seems to have focused on the fact that he’s quite a handsome chap and doesn’t look too bad with his shirt off.

And that happened at a charity boxing match, of course. For the record it was to raise money for the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation. He’s on the right, by the way.

Trudeau’s an interesting chap – a former bungee jumper, film actor, engineer and geographer. His charity record doesn’t end with battering his political opponents, either. Apparently he once performed a strip tease to raise money for the fight against liver disease.

Long may they live

Well done to the Norfolk Tortoise Club for joining NCVO. Diary is pleased to add this to the list of enjoyably eccentric charities doing things it never knew about.

It’s a club for tortoise owners, as you’d guess, and its existence prompted Diary to examine the charity register and discover that there are no less than four other charities for tortoises in the UK.

This is obviously arrant foolishness. Why would tortoise owners want this ridiculous extravagance of choice in tortoise care? Shouldn’t we merge all the tortoise charities into one giant tortoise charity – a shell organisation, as it were.

Futurebuilders is in the past

So thanks to the guys who offered Civil Society News a Back to the Future-themed blog about social finance, called Back to the Futurebuilders. Good brand stretching there, boys.

Diary suspects you weren’t entirely serious – the hint being that you said so. But in any case, this august publication will have to regretfully decline. Largely because this column is utterly fed up with BTTFF.

Rick n’ roll

So finally we move onto a staple story of these pages. Some baffling fundraiser who’s decided to do something incredibly stupid. This time it’s a bloke who’s decided to subject himself to 75 hours of being rickrolled to raise money for diabetes charites.

Rickrolling, for those fortunate souls hitherto unaware of it, is the practice of sending someone a video which purports to be entertaining but is actually Rick Astley singing Never Gonna Give You Up, widely considered the most annoying song in the world.

Diary feels compelled to point out that he’s not actually technically rickrolling himself, since he knows what’s coming, but Jack nonetheless volunteered to listen to the song 2,500 times, which is going above and beyond.

Diary wonders, really, why someone has to do this to themselves before people are willing to hand over cash. Couldn’t we just give him the money and suggest he stays at home and does something useful?

Anyway, he’s packed up now, saying that he’d had enough of the internet trolls who were leaving comments under the YouTube video. Presumably he’s had enough of Astley, too, and it’s hard to blame him.

It hardly matters, though. He’s already raised £2,700. And, as Billy Hoyle makes abundantly clear in White Men Can’t Jump, you can't ever ask for the money back.