That taboo called L-Istrina

PBS Chairman Clare Thake Vassallo may have a million degrees and may hold a killer lecturing position at University, but man, she has no affinity with her audience.

Otherwise I'm sure she would not have uttered the infamous statement: "If we have to choose between seeing a striptease by Miriam Dalli and Francis Zammit Dimech or €500, we'll choose €500."

If one puts on a tiny microscopic thinking hat, one would easily come up with the maths: promise viewers the Dalli striptease if they phone in to donate five times that amount, and our charities would have got a surplus of €2,000 in five minutes flat.

As PBS chairman, Thake is not just responsible just for the amount of money which ends up in the charity piggy; she is responsible for her audience. She is responsible for a society which should not have trash TV flung upon it, in the guise of charity.

For a flickering moment, this year it seemed we were not going to get the teleshopping stint and, to quote Sylvanus, my fellow columnist below, the 'cross-dressing 'celebrities''.

When I switched on the TV early in the afternoon, Jason Micallef and Paul Borg Olivier were jesting about on treadmills. It was good TV, seeing two people who only a week before had been tearing each other's guts out on Xarabank. It is healthy for us as hot-headed, easily divided islanders to have one day a year where we can see that the people who polarise us are actually good friends.

Hmmm... I said. This looks refreshing. For all but two nanoseconds: suddenly it was all telelotterying again, with the change in format decision having been taken because people were only phoning in with donations when prizes were given out.

We are made to feel bad to talk about this. L-Istrina is, at the end of the day, another taboo. If we criticise it, we're made to feel that we're egging people on not to contribute and, ergo, that we're not sensitive to the people who will benefit from the money. "The controversy does not hurt L-Istrina, it hurts those people who need the money that we collect," said presenter Joe Azzopardi.

The thing is, as the amount collected decreases with each year, it is already hurting them. If the format stays the same, the amount will keep shrinking.

We can't have mega TV programmes reflecting a superfluous, vain and ignorant society. We are better than this - as the Dar tal-Providenza low-key, non-lottery fundraising event showed. And this is not about finger pointing at people who want to give-and-take. That's human nature. Dickens wouldn't have written Scrooge otherwise. But the final aim of collecting a gynormous amount of money for people in need can be reached in a more creative and positive manner.

As it is, the feeling is far from 'feel good'. Gordon Pace, an organiser of L-Istrina 2007 said that after he organised the event he was left with an "ugly" feeling inside: "I felt like I had sold my soul. It stopped being about giving and started to be about how much people could win and a race to top last year's figure."

It's not just the lottery format which is reflecting this bad taste. It's also the 'light entertainment'. Who wants light entertainment? It's boring. The organisers this year had it spot on: We need fantastic entertainment. What makes people donate willingly?

Challenges like the Dalli striptease. Using comedy and laughter to get people stuck to their TV sets, raise more money and so change lives. The laugh-out-loud feelgood factor makes people give more than lotteries do. But Thake needs to give it a bit more than a couple of hours.