The media is feeding on the meltdown, on the possibility of apocalypse. 24/7 TV news has created its own disaster narrative, with little focus on the actual people putting their lives on the line.

As for Comic Relief, the luvvie brigade is out in force, all turning somersaults for a good cause. This is great stuff on one level, but it raises the bar too high for many under-resourced NGOs unable to muster a sleb.

The media demands its sleb fix and charities spend more time wrangling turns than they spend finding a way of captivating the media with the stories that actually matter. It is surely time to put a brake on our interest in celebrity and invest our interest in the real heroes, the unsung people who risk their lives daily to keep us safe.

I’ve been talking about transparency a lot lately, and this is another good example for the need for it – these brave people, who may work in refugee camps or at nuclear power stations, are buried under a slew of celebrity, who often take precedence over, or are even given credit for, their work. It has got to the point where charities can’t get any traction without a shot of celebrity in the media’s arm.

Our culture could do with shining a light on the people behind the scenes instead of going for the easy PR fix, the cheap shortcut, the celebrity version of heroics.

Not that the ridiculously youthful copper who spotted me agreed, mind – it became clear as he approached that he thought his own life was the most important thing in the universe. He was smiling. Clearly I’d made his day.

I immediately launched into the sort of silent, internal tirade one expects from people of a certain age and beyond who are in the wrong and have been caught out by authority figures who looks like they should still be in the boy scouts, or are possibly not long off the teat.

I seethed and grumbled as he gleefully stiffed me for £30. “Where do these fines go?” I asked myself as I paid up with gritted teeth.

And then I saddled up and went on my way to the film. In the warm again, I settled down and got comfortable. And had my pathetic brush with the law thrown into sharp perspective. The film was about how Zimbabwe’s infrastructure collapse has turned the jewel of Africa into a nightmare for thousands of children of primary school age.

It was a truly moving experience, following the lives of three children struggling to find the fees for their next term of school, not mention the next meal. Watching one, HIV positive and looking after his mother who was dying of AIDS, as well as his 18 month old baby sister, was almost too much to bear. The way these children scraped and scratched to make their lives move forward in a meaningful way was heartbreaking and inspiring to watch.

And then a statistic reached from the screen and grabbed me by the throat. It would cost £30 to send this child to school. £30. For a YEAR!

Suddenly the trivial quibbles about my earlier fine disappeared. Where, I asked myself, will the £30 I paid out for skipping a red light go? What cause will it prop up? And then I thought about all the minor transgressions I had committed, often accidentally, that I had not been fined for. Who would it hurt if I fined myself for the worst of them and put a Zimbabwean child through school for a year by sending £30.

There are thousands of children lacking education in southern Africa who, for want of £30, cannot find a way to pull themselves out of the mire. £30 is a trivial sum to us, a small fine for a minor transgression. The majority of us have transgressed accidentally in the course of a year, have things the feel ashamed of.

But nothing we do can be as bad as not even being able to afford a primary education. We are all powerfully aware how important further education is to this country at the moment, but imagine what it must be like to be unable to even learn to read and write for want of £30. These are children who cannot afford to protest – they are too busy surviving hand to mouth and taking care of their dying parents and helpless siblings.

We could utterly transform the lives of thousands of children in Africa if all of us who can afford it gave £30 (or more!) to Zimbabwe’s Children. A small relief of the pressure of guilt for us could utterly transform the lives of thousands of children. Christmas is about giving, but we forget that it is not necessary to see the face of the person who has received the gift.

If you want to help, please donate to Zimbabwe’s Children or just watch the video on their website and forward this to anyone who might help. Anyone who has transgressed and got away with it should think about donating a £30 fine to the charity. Or, if you are entirely guiltless, why not break the law in protest (the most minor of transgressions only, please!) and pay your self-inflicted fine to Zimbabwe’s Children.

Click on this link to donate: http://www.justgiving.com/educatechildrenzimbabwe
To donate more than £30, click here.

Click on this link to find out more: www.zimbabweschildren.org

I think I’ve now spotted the one major difference between the two breeds of footballer on either side of the Atlantic: the British footballer, at the height of his game and money-earning potential, tends to be a rock-em-sock-em hedonist, in it only for the lifestyle, the thrill, the women, the ability to be so rich they can get away with it. American footballers, on the other hand, tend to be do-gooders. Most importantly, they are encouraged to be so.

Take the Walter Payton Man of the Year award for example; every year an American footballer is named Man of the Year for his charitable and voluntary work outside football. The winner’s prize, apart from the honour, is a $25,000 donation by the committee to the footballer’s favourite charity. All 31 runners-up can nominate a charity, each of whom will be given $1000. The PR value is enormous, in that it allows the public to sympathise with very highly paid sports personalities.

British footballers, bereft of any encouragement to be public spirited, tend not to appear at all charitable. The only example of a charitable player that springs to mind immediately is Niall Quinn, who used his testimonial match, on retiring from playing football at Sunderland, to raise over £1 million for charity, an act so surprising that it won him several awards, including an honorary MBE. Most lower rung footballers use such games to line their pockets against retirement. The higher paid they are, the less likely they are to be seen giving to anyone but their immediate circle.

I’d suggest that it is high time the FA consider the American awards-for-charitable-work PR model for British football, as the ongoing culture amongst players of wealth without responsibility, of sleaze and selfishness, is quite capable of killing the sport entirely in the eyes of the British public.

Look carefully at the hands of the ape on the right...

A hug from Danni and Simon may be all very well, but it seems that The Fame Formula is the hardened fame seeker’s reference book of choice when it comes to helping build the courage to leap onto the first greasy rung of the ladder of stardom. Personally, I can’t help hoping that some more audition hopefuls will, er… ape these guys and go out and buy the book…

The guys from Bragster, the social networking site for daredevils, were the ones dressed in the gorilla suits, braving the raised eyebrows of Cowell and co. The site’s boss Bertrand was dared to take part by his colleagues, with £1000 going to charity on the condition that he get a hug from one of the main judges. Here’s a link to some footage of him in action on the ITV website – I particularly like his version of I Want to Be Like You…

He has no chance of that happening since the protestors came out and stoned his Edinburgh home. His is the high watermark of PR disasters; he is soaked through with the bad press. It is lapping at his shoulders. What he needs, of course, is a decent rescue package, of the sort that the sly old PR foxes, who I wrote about in The Fame Formula, would have concocted to salve his image. With that in mind, I have five solutions for him.

• The Reggie Perrin plan: Sir Fred could leave his clothes on the beach and disappear, becoming an urban legend akin to Lord Lucan. Unlike Lord Lucan, he would be expected to come back after a reasonable amount of time has passed, and other bankers are outed, so that he can resume his career as a pantomime villain after he’s had a decent rest.
• The Michael Jackson play: Another alternative for Sir Fred is to fly out to the King of Pop’s retreat in the Middle East and get advice from Jackson’s team of image specialists on how to make a comeback with reputation renewed. If he takes this option, expect a 50 date inspirational lecture series at the O2 Arena in 2010/11 under the title ‘Financial Disasters and how to survive them’ it may even sell out if anyone can afford to go. He could make a fortune by selling merchandise – £2.50 for a single rotten tomato perhaps?
• The Leonard Cohen plan: Alternatively, Sir Fred could renounce worldly matters, cast off his possessions and become a Buddhist monk. Ridding his soul of the weight of the seven cars, numerous houses and vast quantities of money to go and wallow in the richness of the universe would certainly help shred his karmic PR debt. One word of warning; Leonard Cohen tried it and didn’t give up the money. Instead, it was stolen by his accountant. To be tried only if Sir Fred’s intention is serious.
• The Charity play: If the ascetic life doesn’t tempt him, Sir Fred could always just set up a charitable trust to dispose of a large part of his income.
• The Tootsie plan: Finally, if all else fails, Sir Fred could find his way to a Swiss clinic, transform himself into a woman and, so disguised, come back and get a job at RBS. Once there, he/she could reinvigorate the failed bank in the same manner as he did between 2001 and 2006 and then, just as he/she is about to be awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, he/she should disrobe on the steps of Buckingham Palace, wipe off the makeup and declare that Fred the Shred is BACK (keeping fingers crossed that RBS doesn’t suddenly collapse again in the meantime) and fighting for the reputation of bankers everywhere.