It's all for a good cause - but is it art?

6:36pm Friday 18th January 2008

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Having been involved in a popular television programme, people raising funds for charity often contact me with various requests. Often it is easy to help. A photo, a signature, a message of support even - all easily given. Occasionally the request is more difficult.

I have never forgotten the awful experience of a Sunday newspaper door-stepping me about my snubbing of a local woman's charity fundraising.

Some 25 years ago, when I lived the other side of Aylesbury, a villager offered me a bag of cash that she had collected via a door to door collection for the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths, the charity of which I was then, and remain, a trustee.

I had been cautioned against accepting cash, for fear of subsequent disagreements about amounts etc. So, I thanked the lady profusely, gave her contact details and asked her to send it herself directly to the Foundation. I explained that I had no receipt book and could not officially accept her money myself. She then contacted the press and complained that I had callously spurned her charitable offering.

Fortunately, on this occasion, either my response was believed, or something even more sleazy and heinous was done by someone much more famous, that edged my unconscionable behaviour out of the paper.

But there are still pitfalls.

I recently received a cardboard tube containing a sheet of paper and some pens. The writer invited me to draw a picture that would then be auctioned off for a worthwhile cause.

They showed examples of the stunning and innovative work of other "celebs" and I have been dithering indecisively ever since. Having failed Art O-level because my bunch of twigs was so hideously dismal that it resembled a blind witch's self portrait on a bad hair day, I am pathologically reluctant to offer my pathetic daubs to anyone. All I can draw is Chad. Remember him?

"Wot no artistic ability?" Ask your grandparents!

And who on earth is going to bid for that?

But you can't let a charity down.

Do I get my artistic daughter to draw something and send it as my work? No, that would be cheating. It's a charity, for heaven's sake.

I will ask her to teach me how to draw something faintly artistic and send that off. It'll probably resemble Chad's head on a very bad hair day.

Old dogs and new tricks? I think not.