The Real Full Monty celebs were paid £10k EACH but raised just £4k on the night
ITV have defended the astronomical fees they paid each of their eight women celebs who appeared on The Real Full Monty: Ladies Night whose aim was to raise cancer awareness.
While a variety of celebs, including Love Island alumni Megan McKenna and Loose Women’s Coleen Nolan stripped off ‘in the name of charity’, it’s been revealed that each person was paid £10,000 for their time on the one-off show that had the intent to raise awareness of cancer.
The Sun says that viewers were duped into thinking that the programme was to raise money and awareness for cancer research, but in fact just a fraction of the stars’ fees was accumulated in donations.
An insider said: ‘Viewers were made to think The Real Full Monty: Ladies Night was all about raising awareness and funds for breast cancer.
‘While it did raise huge awareness and encourage viewers to check their bodies a host of the stars took a massive payday in the name of charity.
‘It’s pretty appalling that this wasn’t made clear to viewers.
‘Fans will be furious that they pocketed such huge sums.’
Despite paying the featured celebs for Ladies Night a combined total of £80,000, the programme’s charity effort were dwarfed, after the website setup for CoppaFeel!, Breast Cancer Care, and Breast Cancer Now donations accumulated just £4,000 in total.
An ITV spokesperson tried to clear up the matter, but failed to address the fees and instead spoke about what the programme’s intentions were: The Real Full Monty shows focus and aim was raising awareness about cancer and encouraging people to make vital health checks. They clearly weren’t television charity fundraisers.
‘They were ITV’s most watched factual shows this year, with overwhelmingly positive feedback,’ they went on to claimed.
However, the paper also claim that since they got in touch regarding the fees, ITV have reworded the copy on their website, removing the words ‘in the name of charity’ from the description of what the programme was about.
No doubt this would have caused outrage with audiences had they known at the time that the group of stars weren’t simply giving up their time in the name of charity but for a pretty hefty fee.
Only last week were the judges on the celebrity specials of The Great British Bake Off criticised for being paid thousands of pounds that saw stars like Paul Hollywood make in excess of £100,000 in contractual pay for the handful of episodes that were aired for charity.
Elsewhere, the men’s edition of the show was equally well-received and praised, although any fees for the nine celeb men that took part is currently unknown.
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