Cosmo Landesman

With friends like these

And they're no longer just asking for money for fun runs and cake sales

There was a time when you couldn’t walk down your local high street and not be set upon by a succession of ‘charity muggers’ — those relentlessly cheery and chatty young men and women who want your money for worthy causes like Cancer Research UK, Greenpeace, Oxfam or Age UK. These days the high streets are relatively free from their presence and their sales pitch is more restrained. But there’s a new breed of brazen ‘charity muggers’ who want your money — and they’re called your friends.

I used to get emails from friends asking me to dinner or for drinks; now, on a daily basis I get emails from friends asking me for money — money for their favourite charity. They tell me they’re running/walking/singing/swimming/growing a moustache/shaving their heads/ going sober for a month to raise money for some worthy cause, and would I like to sponsor them?

And then there’s another type of worthy cause that friends would like me to make a donation to: themselves. That is, their latest creative project that is currently being crowdfunded and in need of my support. In the past four months I’ve been asked to pledge money to a friend’s novel, a friend’s musical, a friend’s documentary and a book of photographs by a friend. I’ve even been asked to make a donation to someone making a documentary who isn’t a friend, but a friend of a friend. At this rate, I’m going to have to earn more money or lose more friends.

In some ways, the new charity muggers are worse than the old high-street variety. The  latter were, with their synthetic smiles and manufactured mateyness, just another  irritation of modern urban life. A quick ‘no thanks’ or a silent shake of the head would usually see the back of them.

But you can’t be so quick and dismissive with a friend’s pitch for a donation.

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