Stoptober celebrities feel the pinch

Credit where credit's due.

Public Health England responded with impressive speed to my request for information about Stoptober.

I'm still waiting for an answer to my query concerning the number of smokers who signed up for Stoptober 2016. (It was 215,000 last year, down almost 15 per cent on the previous year.)

I do however have a figure for the amount of money PHE paid Phil Tufnell, Craig Revel Horwood, Chris Kamara and Natasha Hamilton to promote the campaign.

The total sum was £29,000.

Compare that to last year when Al Murray, Bill Bailey, Rhod Gilbert and Shappi Khorsandi were paid a total of £195,000 to promote Stoptober.

Or 2014 when PHE allegedly paid £250,000 to Al Murray, Paddy McGuinness, Lee Nelson and Andi Osho for their work.

Anyway, in response to Forest's enquiry, PHE has issued this statement:

"The celebrities were paid £29,000, significantly less than last year, and we worked with Carat, DST, Freuds, M and C Saatchi, MEC, Ogilvy One, Serco and 23Red on the campaign. We operate tight controls to ensure our campaigns return on investment, by delivering savings for the NHS and other public services."

Knowing what some celebrities charge for an after dinner speech, for example, I can't pretend this is unreasonable.

For example, at the height of his popularity Forest was quoted £35k for Al Murray.

Other people we made tentative enquiries about included Stephen Fry (£25k), Joanna Lumley (minimum £12k) and - before he was Mayor of London - Boris Johnson (£10k).

I should stress that our enquiries never went further than an agency so even if we had the money I have no idea if any of them would have agreed to speak at one of our events.

The point is, if you ignore the use of taxpayers' money, £29,000 for four celebrities, two of whom are currently on prime time television shows, is not a bad deal.

It does however beg the question, who approved the payment of £445k for eight comedians (seven if you allow for the fact that Murray was hired twice) over the previous two years.

A more blatant example of a taxpayer-funded quango burning our money I have yet to see. The good news is, such profligacy appears to be over.

Nevertheless, PHE still spent one million pounds of public money on the 2016 Stoptober campaign, so where has all the rest gone?

We know that £500,000 was allocated for Facebook ads and I'm guessing that Carat, DST, Freuds, M and C Saatchi, MEC, Ogilvy One, Serco and 23Red didn't volunteer their services for free.

What will be interesting is how the figures for Stoptober 2016 are ultimately spun. In September, in an interview with Sheila Mitchell, PHE's marketing director, Marketing Week reported that:

Stoptober has been a shining success for the government health body. Out of the 2.5 million smokers who made a quit attempt last year, 500,000 were successful.This is the highest recorded success rate and is up from 13.6% six years ago.

If 215,000 signed up I'm not clear how they can also claim that 2.5 million smokers attempted to quit during the campaign with 500,000 being successful.

Aside from the suspiciously round figures, how on earth do they know?

In the meantime let's take heart from the fact that, this year at least, a bunch of 'C' list celebrities aren't being paid excessive amounts of money at our expense.