Another week down and yeah, where does the time go? It’s May already and practically half the year has gone. Good thing it's Friday then.
This week in satirical charity news: the PG Tips Monkey is out on tour and, inevitably, Diary runs down some of the most bizarre things to have been left at a charity shop so far this year.
Monkeying around with PG Tips
Anyone who has ever lurched to their local greasy spoon in the cold, harsh light of a Sunday morning for a cup of tea and a steadying bacon butty or, indeed, ever habitually watched a lot of television between midday and 4pm on a weekday, will know about PG Tips.
PG Tips are purveyors of, and Diary’s being honest here, teabags which could best be described as ‘not quite Yorkshire Tea but still drinkable’. PG Tips teabags, the go-to tea for when you have your least likable relatives over: weird Uncle Steve and ‘the boys’ – the three cousins who always bullied you growing up and who, even now, many years later, you’ve never really ‘bonded’ with. Keep your stash of T2 jasmine well-hidden and doll out a lukewarm round of PG Tips builders; really put them in their place - the most British form of passive aggression – and pray the conversation doesn’t turn to Brexit.
Anyway, the thing that PG Tips is perhaps best known for, even more than its caffeinated fare, is its monkey mascot. Indeed Monkey, as he’s known, is an animated sock-puppet monkey (in case you hadn’t guessed) who has basically transcended the brand he mascots for and become a pop culture phenomenon in his own right.
Monkey has been places. Monkey has seen things. Monkey was once part of a double act with non-other than husky comedian and Northern every-man Johnny Vegas. Monkey was in an episode of The Office, for heaven’s sake. Monkey has lived the high life, been to all the best parties and, generally, sipped heavily from the steaming, milky mug of success.
With all that being taken as read, it was only a matter of time until Monkey found himself fronting a charitable fundraising campaign. And, lo, so it has been with Diary being sent a press release which screamed: “Foodservice operators have raised #1millionlaughs for Red Nose Day”.
Odd choice, not getting Monkey in the headline but, it turns out that everyone’s favourite simian sock-puppet has been out on tour raising money and, apparently, laughs for Red Nose Day 2017.
Yes Monkey went on tour, travelling to 20 (20!) workplaces, hospitals and care homes around the UK. There were also videos with “famous foodservice faces” – name one famous foodservice face and Diary will literally give you £1m (or laughs, whichever you’d prefer) – a Monkey Facebook chatbot, which frankly sounds kind of terrifying, and a run of 1,500 “dashing” limited edition Monkeys.
Fair play to this great ape though, as Monkey managed to raise £50,000 for Red Nose Day in the process.
“We did it chums!” said Monkey. “Well, mostly me. But you all definitely helped. So from the foodservice celebri-teas* who told us their jokes to the care homes, workplaces and hospitals who invited me to their chari-tea fundraising events – I say thank you.”
Despite the gloating, Monkey did not respond to Society Diary’s request for a face-to-face interview.
*Quick sidebar, that tea pun is GENIUS!
The gifts that keep on giving
So, the Hospice UK Retail Awards 2017 were held a few weeks ago in London. A swanky black-tie event to be sure, with the cream of the charitable retail sector in attendance. Needless to say Diary wasn’t invited. However, it has it on good authority that a hospice shop in Manchester was awarded with the event’s most coveted crown: the Most Unusual Item donated award.
A St Ann’s hospice in Edgeley, Greater Manchester had an “antique birthing stool – designed to support women to stay in an upright posture during childbirth” left outside its door, along with the usual heaped bin bags full of old shirts and track pants, earlier this year.
Quite what your average charity shop devotee would do with an antique birthing stool is hard to say. Thankfully, it’s something of a moot point as the charity shop sold the stool to a local antiques dealer with the income coming back to the local hospice.
Other items worthy of mention included an “unbroken 96-year-old chicken egg which had been saved in a cardboard box since Easter 1921” (why?), a full-size doctor’s skeleton (creepy, at best) and a pair of “customised white jeans covered in graffiti, some featuring swear words” (quelle horreur!).
One would assume that those jeans did not go on to be displayed in the shop window. Haw haw haw.
That’s why Diary loves charity shops so much. Not only can the discerning buyer often strike gold with designer clothing and accessories at bargain basement prices, but one can also occasionally pick up an outdated childbirth aid, or an ossified hen’s egg.
Stay classy, Britain.
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