Peter Andre was 'paid thousands of pounds' to busk for 15 minutes in a charity fundraiser

Last month, Peter Andre surprised everybody when he busked in the streets of London in order to raise money for Shelter, a homeless charity.

The star was praised for “taking the time” to put on the 15 minute performance, which saw him perform some of his much-loved hits including 90s classic ‘Mysterious Girl’.

However, The Mirror have now claimed that Peter was paid an “eye-watering sum” by building society Nationwide for the charity gig, and that his fundraising efforts only raised £260.

The £260 was collected from electronic donations and by Nationwide staff at the gig as they campaigned for people to donate to charity via mobiles and debit cards.

Speaking in a video two weeks after the event, Peter promoted Nationwide by saying: “By doing a secret gig on the streets like this and using mobile payments to make it quick and easy for people to donate, we managed to raise hundreds of pounds from people’s kind donations in a matter of minutes.”

The star’s reps today insisted that he had donated to Shelter himself and that Peter supports “six or seven chosen charities and does everything for them free of charge every year”.

Meanwhile, Shelter confirmed that they had not personally given any money to the star and were grateful for his donation.

Although Peter’s fee did not come out of the charity’s pocket, the move does raise debate over whether stars should be paid to publicly support charities or carry out charity work.

Just last year there was outrage when it was revealed that celebrities are paid to appear on charity editions of popular TV shows such as Pointless and The Chase, and in 2015 Made In Chelsea star Alexandra ‘Binky’ Felstead was slammed for being paid £3,000 to front a campaign for charity Barnardo’s.

Binky later made it clear that she’d insisted the charity had kept her fee.

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