Rosie Richardson, short-skirted, under-appreciated Publicity Gel, dumps her egotistical, bullying, TV presenter boyfriend and heads to Africa to save the natives. But after four years in the plains, a plague of locusts and civil war take their toll, the frustrated and disillusioned Rosie is pushed back to her media-dahling roots in London.

Armed with a bucket full of will power, she fends off the determined amorous advances of her ex whilst trying to enlist his celebrity-pulling power to further her personal Cause Celeb: a Live Aid inspired celebrity television appeal to raise cash for food in the country she left behind.

Cause Celeb isn't exactly ground breaking but it does manage to bring a little gravitas to what is basically a novel about love, sex and a world where insincere celebs are fawned over by all and sundry. The descriptions of the African camp where Rosie spends four years of her life (concentrating on her career until a doctor--hunky, naturally--woos her over a few bloodied bodies) are vivid enough to force the dramatic irony forward as Rosie's past and present collide, and her jaded experiences of London life will certainly ring true for many readers.

All in all, Cause Celeb is the kind of book you might read in the bath or on the beach--not too taxing but involving and spirited enough to make you want to find out what happens in the end. --Susan Harrison

2008-10-22 Not the lightweight novel it at first seems!

This is the first novel by Helen Fielding of Bridget Jones fame which she wrote in 1994. Surprisingly I never read until now. It is a satirical story full of both ridiculous and tragic events about what happens when celebrity aid comes to the help of famine relief in Africa. It is this angle that makes this novel more than just another chick lit type novel. It is I read a subject Helen Fielding is interested in and she has worked in producing documentaries for relief for such famines.
The heroine Rosie Richardson is living in London, working in publishing when we first meet her. After a disastrous relationship with Oliver Marchant a minor television celebrity who turns out to be cruel and manipulative she becomes disillusioned with her lifestyle. As a complete life change she heads for Africa to work as a Director of a refugee camp, for a charity. Four years later famine strikes and desperate for funds Rosie decides to use her celebrity acquaintances to raise emergency funds by organising a television appeal from the camp itself.
Towards the end of the novel the descriptions of the human suffering are powerful and disturbing. It is fourteen years since this novel was written and sadly many parts of the world are still suffering in such a way, despite worldwide campaigns to try and reduce such incidents.
I quote from the novel direct as I think it is an excellent reaction of the horrors as viewed by the aid workers and celebrities. `It was such a monumental horror that it felt as though nothing should be the same any more, nothing should continue: none of us should speak or do anything, the sun should not be moving across the sky and the wind should not blow. It did not seem possible that such a thing as this could be taking place without the world having to shudder to a halt and think again.'
This might start out seeming like a lightweight novel but it certainly does not leave you feeling that way at the end!