PRESENT TENSE:SINCE FÁILTE TOWERS ended we've had a hiatus from RTÉ's occasional ventures into celebrity talent shows and reality concepts. It means we've also had a break from the unseemly ritual in which celebrities beg viewers to vote for them based on their chosen charity, writes Shane Hegarty
"Don't vote for me," they're saying, "vote for little Timmy, whose cancer's eating away at him every moment you hover over that phone." These shows give us a bizarre and grubby nightly routine in which celebrities use a few seconds to effectively ask the viewer to weigh up the merits of sick kids against, say, the plight of the homeless. It means that viewers who tune in for a bit of escapist rubbish are instead handed a deeply troubling philosophical conundrum to which there is no answer other than to vote for them all: Don Baker, Brian Dowling, sick kids, the legless pets refuge, whoever. That's the cost of a restful night's sleep.
Perhaps that's why these programmes bring so many calls; it's multiple voting by individuals trying to unburden themselves of the weight of moral guilt.
However, the success is also down to charities getting the vote out. Who a celebrity nominates as their charity must surely have some benefits for their long-term survival in the show. A big charity with a large organisational structure is more likely to get the vote out than a smaller one. You might think that's a cynical view to have towards charity, but it's not: it's a cynical view about showbusiness.
All of this comes to mind because an unseemly row broke out this week over just when the charities nominated by Fáilte Towers contestants would get their money, and the size of the cheques they would receive. Don Baker, a participant in the show, complained that his nominated charity had not seen its cash yet, three months on, while other celebrities said that the sums raised were far less than expected.
For its part, RTÉ - which donated its revenues from the phone calls to the charities - says that the show raised €169,000 for good causes and that it would be handing over that money during the next couple of weeks. After the phone operators were accused of profiting from previous shows, for this series they covered only their costs, giving any profits to the charities. Nevertheless, RTÉ won't release details of how many calls it logged, saying that it is commercially sensitive information. Oddly, similar British programmes don't share that concern. They have been releasing the statistics as a matter of course for years.
The point, though, isn't about the statistics, but about the strange shabbiness of the whole charity angle. It should be a straightforward thing: people vote, money goes to charity, everybody wins. But it is not the first time that they have run one of these series only for it to result in gripes over who got what, who didn't get much and how much hassle it all was.
The Sunday Tribune's Justine McCarthy has reported that some of the charities are unhappy at the rewards compared to the effort they have to put in. They mobilise people, print T-shirts and distribute flyers, so that some of the money raised can be needed to offset the cost of being involved in the first place. But they're caught in a bit of a bind, in that they can hardly be seen to complain. The celebrities, though, once freed of their obligations to the programme, are usually good for a quote. In 2006, Green TD Dan Boyle expressed his disappointment at the amount of money raised when he sang on Charity You're A Star, and wondered if some of the mobile phone companies had made more out of it than the charities. Actor Una Crawford O'Brien claimed that the money raised for the National Children's Hospital didn't even cover the cost of the T-shirts and flyers printed in order to drum up a vote.
Of course, some of the charities do quite well out of these programmes. Temple Street Children's Hospital got €130,000 thanks to actor David Mitchell's participation in You're a Star. And with Fáilte Towers, RTÉ learned from previous complaints by promising a minimum of €5,000 to every nominated charity. But just because RTÉ labels a show Charity You're a Star, let's not pretend it's a grand altruistic gesture on its part. This is not the broadcaster's version of Live Aid.
Instead, it effectively uses the charities to build an audience, votes and hype. They form a free, and extensive, network of PR agents for the show.
Meanwhile, because of the charities, celebrities have donated their time for nothing. Compare this to the UK's celebrity shows, where the stars of Strictly Come Dancing's are being paid handsomely, as they should be, for being integral to building the shows' ratings.
While you shouldn't be expected to get teary for the Irish celebrities, it also seems somewhat unfair that they, the stars, give their time for free, unlike the judges and presenters.
And it's all so that, in the midst of the usual reality show excitement, there can be this strange sport in which charities are pitched against one another. Something so supposedly feel-good really shouldn't leave you feeling this queasy.
shegarty@irish-times.ie
Ross O'Carroll-Kelly is resting