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Bad taste? Posh UK club to hold Ebola-themed Halloween party

This article is more than 12 months old

A famous club in England is under fire for its plans to throw a Ebola-themed Halloween party.

The Daily Telegraph reported that The Scotch of St James in Mayfair, London will play host to the event called Saturday Night Ebola Fever next weekend.

While the event reportedly features a charity element that will see "discretionary" £10 ($20.50) donations made at the door go to Doctors Without Borders to aid Ebola victims, the club has been slammed for making light of the ongoing epidemic in Africa.

Trivialising the matter

Tom Dannatt, the chief executive and founder of a charity that is raising funds to helps sufferers of the virus, told the Telegraph: "To trivialise matters like that let alone to instrumentalise them for one’s own enjoyment or commercial gain is beyond the pale.

"Anyone trying to make any personal benefit let alone light out of the Ebola situation is reprehensible.

"We need all the money we can get to go into fighting Ebola and the human consequences of it. But if it is a discretionary donation - attaching a charity's name to the branding of a night - that's not charity, that's just wrong."

Word play

Event organisers Momxdad insisted through a spokesman that the name of the fancy dress part was merely a "play on words" of movie title Saturday Night Fever and that they had "intended this to be a helpful thing".

"The theme is Saturday Night Fever, not Ebola. This has always been about charity, we wouldn’t want to make fun of people dying," said the spokesman.

"We are not trivialising it, we intended this to be a helpful thing. If it has not come across that way maybe we should not go ahead with it."

Club backing

The Scotch, which has hosted musical icons like Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles and Stevie Wonder in the past, backed the controversial name of the event.

The club's spokesman said: "We are aware events company Momxdad is hosting a charity Halloween event this Saturday to raise money that would go towards helping victims of Ebola.

"They are estimated to make roughly £1,500 (from donations which will be taken on entry) which would go to Doctors without Borders.

"We support Momxdad’s charity Halloween event as we take the Ebola crisis very seriously, and would like to help as much as we can on our part to stem the spread of Ebola."

Source: The Daily Telegraph

 

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