‘I sure want y’all to read and write proper’

Dolly PartonCelebs lend their name face and name to many things. Heather Mills is desperate to get people to take landmines seriously (or should that be ‘her’ seriously), for example. Meanwhile, stars such as Will Young and Helena Bonham Carter are starring in this year’s Oxfam Unwrapped campaign.

However, I can’t have been the only person to have been mildly baffled that Dolly Parton was heading a literacy program in the UK, of all places.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of Dolly. Who couldn’t love a woman who ‘tumbles out of bed and stumbles to the kitchen to pour herself a cup of ambition’?

But why on earth do we need Miss Parton to front (ahem!) a campaign that encourages kids to read and write better. I mean, how many kids know who Dolly is?

I know that half the role models out there are only semi-literate themselves, but the people behind this must have been able to find someone a little more suitable, surely.

2 thoughts on “‘I sure want y’all to read and write proper’”

  1. Ah, but the programme is Dolly’s own initiative, so she’s entitled to be the face, I suppose, I admire that woman so much, and I also quite like the fact that the kids won’t know who she is, beyond a nice woman who gave them a book. I loathe so many people involved in charidee work, who only do it to give themselves a great public image. I’d love to see Lynn Faulds Wood be able to attract a major celeb to front her bowel cancer campaign, but because it’s not sexy or ‘nice’, that’s a tall order.

  2. True, true, Clair, I know it was Dolly’s idea, but it beggars belief that people in Rotherham had to reach out across the Atlantic to find someone to help improve literacy – I suppose that’s my point really.

    I bet there are 100s of campaigns who would love a major ‘relevant’ celeb to front their appeals. But hey, Pele did impotence, so there’s still hope

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