In an interview on Aid Work

What made you choose Cause Celeb by Helen Fielding?

Because I believe it is the only novel about emergency response. This is quite odd, considering that it often dominates our news and so many people donate to aid organisations. And it’s written by Helen Fielding, who is best known for Bridget Jones’s Diary. She tells a good story. It is the story of a woman who drops her boyfriend and well-paid job in London and goes to a made-up African country. This part is slightly odd because it could very easily have been a real one. To me it seems based on Ethiopia as there is the background of conflict and it was published after the 1984 famine. The main character gets involved in the relief efforts after the famine and feels really strongly about it. She returns to London and to her previous business contacts and her boyfriend and persuades them to fundraise. She returns to Africa with money and a media team to publicise what’s going on.

It’s a slightly simplistic version rather than a complex account, but it’s a good read and having worked in emergency response myself I believe it’s a pretty accurate portrayal of what goes on.

There is also a scene that makes you reflect about watching these sorts of news stories every night on TV. The television crew are really excited because they catch a dying woman’s words on camera, which is morally ambiguous and quite painful to think about. The crew thinks of her as one of the ‘starving millions’. For the main character though it was very painful because she knew the woman, who was well educated but trapped on the wrong side of the situation and, along with everyone else, could not afford to feed herself. It makes you think about what you’re watching.