The revenue raised for charity in this year's celebrity entertainment show, Charity You're a Star, is set to exceed last year's contribution of just under €320,000, RTÉ said yesterday.
The accounts for this year's series have not yet been released, but the programme's coffers are expected to have been boosted by an increase in audience participation. A spokeswoman for RTÉ said 465,000 more people viewed the series, compared with 2006. Further revenue has been added to this year's overall charity fund with the donation of the series' full sponsorship fee by RTÉ and Whirlpool.
RTÉ declined to release information about the fees paid to the show's judges, journalist Brendan O'Connor, former Westlife singer Brian McFadden and former Miss Ireland, Amanda Brunker.
The 10 contestants raised money for charities of their choice over the past 10 weeks. Money is raised when viewers send text messages to the show or make phonecalls to cast votes for their favourite performers.
A minimum of 42c per 60c call or text vote was donated to charity this year. RTÉ donated its entire share of phone revenue to charity. According to RTÉ, some phone companies donated more of the phone call and text message proceeds than others. 02 retained the highest proportion of the text costs at 7c per message. Eircom retained the least, at 2c per call to cover costs.
The final show was aired on Sunday and the overall winners were GAA Allstars, whose chosen charity was the Gary Kelly Cancer Support Centre.
The winning act, former GAA players Barney Rock, Dave Beggy and Jack O'Shea, performed a striptease rendition of the Full Monty number You Can Leave Your Hat On to a wildly enthusiastic audience.