Ben Cohen: Sweet Charity

Ben's new calendar costs just £27.99.

Guesstimated cost of manufacture: < £1.

If you're going to Soho's Prowler Store tonight, please ask the legendary Ben Cohen where the money will be going.

Will his Standup Foundation be giving out in grants more than the usual 5-10% they do?

I asked a spokesbot for the foundation about this, and they said; 'Erm, new organisation, start-up costs, blah blah blah...'

Okay, but why has so little changed in their last published US accounts?

On Friday this leading GAY ICON and STRAIGHT ALLY is asking people to take to Twitter and use the hashtag #WhyIStandUp to support his anti-bullying work and - of course - donate.

You may also want to use it to, and this is just an example btw, ask why his US StandUp Foundation paid his (now ex) wife Abbie, $130,000 in two years, when they only gave out $35,000 in grants?

You may also like to ponder why none of this has ever been mentioned in the endless fawning coverage of GAY ICON and STRAIGHT ALLY hunky, furry, sexy Ben in the UK and US gay media.

Bad Santa?

PS Gushing Mirror interview, Friday...

“I was completely unaware of any gay following until one day about seven or eight years ago, I got a message out of the blue from a French lad, Laurence, from Paris. He had set up a fan page in honour of me on Facebook. I wondered what the hell I’d done to deserve this.

“He said ‘Ben, you are my hero and there are lots of others like me that feel the same way. There’s a group of us on Facebook’.

“So I checked it out and there were 37,000 members. When I scrolled down, I noticed they were all men. Apparently I’d become a gay icon. That was a surprise to me. I didn’t even know what that meant!"

I wonder if anything else crossed his mind?

Ker-CHING!