While shopping at the weekend I came across two curious things which didn't quite sit right.

The first was French chef Jean Christophe Novelli appearing in big pictures to promote a product. Nothing much strange there until you saw that he was advertising a middle to low range lager. Now maybe I'm wrong but the idea of Jean Christophe turning down a glass of fine wine and instead glugging back a few cans of lager is an image I can't quite grapple with. It seemed a very bizarre collaboration and one which might have been dreamt up by someone planning to enter the next series of the Apprentice providing they upped their incompetence just a little bit more.

It is not the first time a product and its celebrity endorser have not quite matched. I for one am completely bemused as to why dour defensive minded football pundit Alan Hansen would make anyone want to shop at Morrisons. There's the classic pen advert with David Beckham, who probably had hours of coaching in which way up to hold it. And of course U2, those campaigners for an end to global poverty and truth and justice, appearing in the iPod adverts, the MP3 device made by that tiny company Apple who could probably sort out most of the world's poverty if they chose to.

The second incident was at a different high-street supermarket. After paying for my shopping I was given a token and was told I could put it into one of three pots, each representing a different charity, and that whichever pot had the most tokens at the end of an allotted time (I can't remember how long) that charity would get some money. Sounds great. But when you think about it, you are in fact a harbinger of doom for those two charities that did not quite do enough to warrant your token.

The idea of interactivity has been in the mainstream for some time now. The one that confused me the most was Saturday Kitchen asking people to text and vote for what recipe they would broadcast. Given half of it is archive TV chef footage and some episodes are not even live, I thought this was a bloody cheek and they should just tell me a recipe.

Then there was Restoration, where you could vote to save a building using lottery money. Great for the building that survives but not quite as good for those that don't.

And so this has now come to charities. Of course all the charities have to compete with each other for donations, but surely that means it would be far better to just select a charity that struggles to compete against the big boys and show them some support. Instead we get to choose who is the recipient and who will continue to struggle for funds.

How do you judge who is worthy? The number of dying children? Those with some form of terminal cancer? Women who have been treated appallingly? What makes one charity and the work they do more worthy of your money than another? You already see the big charities pulling on heart strings with big TV and poster ads asking for money. Surely this will only increase as the charity sector becomes as competitive as any other business market. But surely the money they get shouldn't be pumped into advertising but instead spent helping those in need. And where does it leave the little charities who cannot afford these adverts? Desperately pleading for your money and hoping that little token will fall into their box.