My Big Mistakes — And What I Learned From Them

Telephone 'hysteria'

We had a successful television telethon called Hysteria, which included a lot of comedians and performers. In 1993 the income had fallen so we decided to do a telephone campaign to those who had donated to Hysteria, explaining that the results were disappointing and how urgent our needs were. Rock star Freddie Mercury had just died of HIV/AIDS, which made our appeal even more poignant. The problem was that one of the supporters we rang with the disappointing results was the producer's father, who told on us. Neither the producer nor the television company that had sponsored the telethon were very impressed with us, and some very grumpy letters were soon whizzing around. Despite this, it was a brilliantly successful appeal and brought in a terrific amount of regular givers.