If the price is right

Wondering what's put the rosy, feel-good glow in Gwyneth Paltrow's cheeks? The serene, benevolent smile on Sophie Dahl's lips? The purposeful, positive vigour in George Michael's stride? It's not the Pilates, the organic wheatgrass smoothies, the rumoured love affairs. It's not even the Cr?me de la Mer finally paying off. It's altruism. Our celebrities have found charity.

Currently, as far as the vast majority of stars are concerned, a social occasion without a charitable fundraising angle is no kind of party at all. Formerly the preserve of the middle-aged, Botoxified, Chanel-besuited society woman, the celebrity classes have recently co-opted the charity bash and transformed it into the dernier cri in chic partying opportunity. The charity auction/benevolent dinner/fundraising hotel launch, is the new premiere, the new awards ceremony.

'When an invitation drops through the door, you start thinking: ''Who's this in aid of?"' explains Yasmin Mills, model, writer and TV presenter. 'If the party or auction is not for a charity, it is almost frowned upon.' Consequently, all the most glittering, well-attended parties of recent times have come complete with a charitable tie-in. Take last month's wildly fashionable An Evening at the Sanderson. Ian Schrager gave up his hotel for free, Lady Helen Taylor, Bob Geldof, Alexander McQueen, Patrick Cox, Kate Winslet, Sharleen Spiteri and Dan Macmillan all turned up and glittered frantically from the midst of the fizz-fuelled m?l?e. More than £100,000 was raised for Sargent Cancer Care for Children.

Then consider Prince Charles' Highgrove-based bash - one hundred and fifty grand's worth of extravagant gorgeousness designed to thank the assorted patrons of his causes. Joan Rivers was MC, Shirley Bassey sang, and the guest list included a couple of Rockefellers, Queen Noor of Jordan, Ross Kemp, Patsy Kensit and Babs Windsor, all of whom had, in the past, donated an average of £100,000 to the Prince's charitable concerns.

And then, of course, there was the Vogue It's Fashion auction, which must surely rate as the first great charitable bash of the millennium to date. Held at Waddesdon Manor, the Buckinghamshire retreat of Lord Rothschild, it played out like a pageant of the world's buzziest, hippest and most beautiful. Madonna and Mick Jagger didn't go, but pretty much everyone else did - and they went with the intention of spending money.

Clearly, the celebrity passion for charitable pursuits is growing by the day. Which is all very well, now that the fundraising endeavour has been declared officially fashionable, but it doesn't actually explain how it managed to rebrand itself in the first place. After all, until really rather recently, celebrity philanthropy equalled at best a strategic cameo on a Band Aid record in the interest of reviving a flagging career; at worst, Michael Jackson and friends holding hands and lisping their way through 'We are the world'. It was, in short, irrevocably naff.

Apparently, much of charity's new hip vibe evolved in New York. Manhattan's social scene, freshly reinvented according to the puritanical, public-spirited morality of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's anti-corruption campaign, now revolves entirely around the charity party moment. Gwyneth Paltrow, according to recent reports, is fast superseding Ivana Trump as queen of the Manhattan charity circuit, and has taken to urging fans to 'Go out and volunteer at a homeless shelter, you know what I mean?' rather than spend time deconstructing her latest haircut. She recently auctioned herself off as a dinner-date companion at a Robin Hood Foundation dinner which raised a total of $18 million for 'venture philanthropy'. Manhattan made charity dressy, extravagant and elitist, and thus infinitely more palatable as far as delicate A-list sensibilities were concerned.

However, while such major league transatlantic endorsement is enough to encourage chic London society to take up similar pursuits in itself, the Brit charity scene is also resoundingly Blairite in its overtones. Vaguely socially aware, but still reassuringly pretty and pleasantly styled, extravagant and sparkly yet with absentmindedly good intentions, charity in its current incarnation owes a great deal to the influence of New Labour.

It's the same cultural climate that embraced chic re-styled Oxfam stores, repackaged as the ultimate purveyors of cool salvage. There's also something distinctly post-Diana about it all. By championing the poor, the downtrodden and the sickly in an immensely public, self-conscious and arguably self-serving manner, while looking achingly gorgeous and a wee bit sad, any piece of C-list fluff gets to associate herself with the People's Princess for a night.

Beyond the broader cultural context, celebs clearly have a great deal to gain on an individual level by affiliating themselves to a charitable concern. After all, celebrity must be extraordinarily wearing on the karma. There you are, famous and thus practically contractually obliged to be fixated by material wealth and superficial beauty, compelled to be entirely self-obsessed and really, really mean to all those who surround you, destined to cheat on your lovers and ditch long-term, faithful friends in favour of the sparkly new ones you're making - well, it hardly guarantees you inner peace and an in-road to Nirvana, does it?

But get yourself on the charity auction circuit, and you achieve spiritual damage limitation with minimal effort. You get to feel every night that you are a kind person just by going to a load of really great parties. You also earn the right to show how frightfully self-aware and humble you actually are, and to say things like: 'I'm so incredibly privileged that not to do something would be kind of obscene,' (Kate Reardon, contributing editor to Vanity Fair, and serial arranger of charity events).

Of course, should you discover that you are not actually that bothered about your spiritual health, you'll almost certainly benefit from the publicity opportunities implicit in a buzz round the charity circuit. 'I make my lot do a minimum of three a month, buy something high-profile at one of those, model or donate to the auction at another,' says one celeb PR. One of her charges has developed a careful bidding tactic, which ensures that he is widely perceived as being very generous, but never has to pay for anything. 'Don't start bidding early on in the evening,' he insists. 'No one will notice, and you'll seem like a cheapskate because they have all the smaller lots on then. Wait until the atmosphere builds a bit, and the lots start getting bigger and more impressive. Also, when everyone's a bit pissed, they notice you bidding, but don't register that you never actually buy anything.'

As an added bonus, celebrities often feel entitled - if not obliged - to be terribly daring and gossip-column titillating in the name of increasing the profile of the evening's cause. Where did Charles and Camilla choose to share their first public embrace? At an osteoporosis fundraiser at Somerset House. Where did Nicole Kidman make her social debut following mass coverage of her miscarriage and the beginnings of her divorce proceedings? At a Manhattan charity screening of Moulin Rouge. Even Mick Jagger's no-show at Waddesdon Manor amounted to a fantastically loaded statement - both his alleged lover Sophie Dahl, and his daughter Jade were in attendance. And so, somehow, celebrity misdemeanours, scandals and misfortunes are reinvented as the devices via which good causes are promoted.

Beyond this, charity bashes offer all sorts of fashion opportunities. Celebrity Charity Chic is a sartorial statement first pioneered by Diana, whose trip to Rwanda to publicise the Red Cross landmine appeal alerted every woman in middle England to the potential of teaming beige three-quarter-length trousers with a crisp white shirt and comfortable-yet-stylish flats. Because the most cachet among causes are often affiliated with the upper echelons of the fash pack, charitable dos are intensely competitive arenas for all those concerned with sartorial matters. Consequently, celebrities can somehow get away with blowing seven times what they donate to charity overall in the course of a year on just one frock for one charitable engagement, without anyone minding or even noticing.

Needless to say, the charity social game can also backfire violently on those who don't understand how to play it well. The charity auction of celebrity goodies, for example, operates as a devastatingly blunt calibrator of a person's fame stock. When Yahoo! auctioned a selection of clock faces customised by assorted stars, the sums raised spoke volumes about the individual worth of those involved. While Kylie's scored £1,040, William Hague's went for a paltry £165 - which was, nonetheless, an entire fiver more than Tony Blair got for his. Chris Tarrant, riding high, presumably, on the success of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, raised £235 for his offering, while Gaby Roslyn managed an embarrassing £77.50.

Trickier still is the increasingly popular profile-raising charitable trip, a practice which sees celebrities travelling to wartorn or famine-stricken areas in an attempt to highlight the plight of the country, spin their public persona some lovely, shiny, humanitarian spirit, and land a spread in Hello! When Martine McCutcheon made a trip to Ethiopia on behalf of WaterAid, she checked herself into the luxurious Addis Ababa Sheraton, posed for pictures on a gleaming Land Rover (which had, presumably, been cleaned with water, the very commodity she was there to preserve), and hightailed it out of there, only three days into her six-day trip.

Still, those non-celebrities keen to get in on the charity scene shouldn't allow themselves to be deterred by such unpleasantness - especially when, it seems, stars themselves are actively encouraging precisely such crossover. Chivas 200 is a live, online auction (www.chivas.com) on behalf of assorted charitable foundations which is currently offering lots that include 'Tea at the Ritz with Helen Mirren' (an hour of scintillating conversation in sumptuous surroundings), and 'Dinner with Oscar-winner Jeremy Irons' (at the luxurious Ballymaloe House Hotel near Cork).

Inevitably, however, it's precisely this kind of thing that will dull the celeb appeal of philanthropy. Once ordinary people get involved, the glitz is bound to tarnish; only this month, financial adviser Paul McCutchene drunkenly waved his arms around at a charity auction and before he knew it, discovered he'd bid £20,000 for a diving trip to the Titanic - to pay for his faux pas he had to remortgage his flat. And Jeremy Beadle was hosting the event. How deeply unglamorous can you get? Once the hoi polloi get their hands on charity and sully it with their lack of specialness - and cash - the star crowd will inevitably lose interest.

The early signs are already there. Charles' Highgrove do was stunningly auction-free - the £3 million pounds raised through the event came from ticket sales and a sponsored polo tournament held the following day. It's clearly only a matter of time before charity once again becomes the province of OAP Sue Ryder volunteers and ladies-who-lunch, and celebrities are forced to find a new way to let the world know that, underneath it all, they are good people. Really.