I'm trying to work out what my objection is to doing sporting activities on behalf of charities. At first I thought it was unrelated to the charitable act itself - this was when I got caught last weekend in the middle of some charity cyclists, and they a) were very annoying cyclists, constantly making merry and observing poor lane discipline; b) were all wearing T-shirts that matched, like some kind of stag weekend, only not, obviously, drunk; and c) had festooned those T-shirts with some really irritating wordplay like The Only Way Is Forward (on the front) and Let's See The Back Of Sickle-Cell Disease (on the back - and it's not that I can't apprehend the seriousness of sickle cell disease: it's the jollity. I can't stand joy!). But that's not it at all. Someone then floated past me the idea that I might do a trek in Peru, to raise money for breast cancer. I'm wholeheartedly in favour of raising money for breast cancer, and I think I probably like trekking, and I like Peru, yet the idea appalled me, which you have to put down to the trial of asking your friends for money. The contract becomes: you, friend, should sponsor me for some effort I might put in, but really it would be nudging at the boundaries of fellowship to expect you to care whether I trek or cycle or hop to Peru, though for some reason it is necessary for me to do so - we can't just all, you know, put our hands in our pockets and give away some money. The implication is that the friend won't engage in charitable giving independently of you. Furthermore, that your physical toil is of so great a merit that nobody need trouble themselves as to how much you're giving, they must just stand back and applaud you, perhaps by flapping fivers in your face. And furthermore (I'm sure this is how it works) some of the money raised will help get you to Peru, since I'm pretty sure you don't walk there, and even if you don't use your friends' money for this but your own, wouldn't the breast cancer cause have been better served by you and your friends just giving it some money without involving Peru? And isn't it patronising to the friends? If you want your friends to pay for your sweat, in the service of some charitable goal for which you'll, ultimately, end up taking the credit, why not offer to scrub their stairs or help them move? That's before you even get on to the cause, which has to be uncontroversial, because you'd anticipate asking everybody you'd ever met to sponsor you, so it couldn't be, you know, Ban Trident or Excise American Fundamentalists From African Aid Programmes. And that's fine, since most diseases and causes are fairly uncontroversial, but there's something about that ideological flattening-out that feels so depressingly apple pie and third way and ITV-on-a-Saturday-Night. Again, just give away some money! Let your friends choose their own cause. They might like controversy. Yes, this argument relies on me, right now, giving some money to a breast cancer charity. And also, you're quite right, to one for sickle-cell anaemia, too.