Labour to auction off Patrick Stewart’s voice to raise election funds

Labour will be holding a gala dinner with an auction to raise major funds for next year’s election campaign. Hosted by Stephen Fry, attendees will be able to bid on a host of items, including artworks by the likes of Sir Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and Grayson Perry, a signed Cristiano Ronaldo football shirt, for Sir Patrick Stewart to record a voicemail for you and… a five-a-side football match against the Shadow Cabinet.

The five-a-side team includes Jim Murphy, Sadiq Khan, Andy Burnham and Ed Balls, while Grayson Perry’s Labour Lion ceramic has been crafted especially for the auction.

As well as being hosted by Fry, there will be other celebrity attendees, including Jason Isaacs (Malfoy in the Harry Potter films), comedian Rhona Cameron and David Morrissey (who played Gordon Brown in The Deal, and The Governor in The Walking Dead).

Money raised at the event, being held at the Roundhouse in north London, will go towards three parts of the election campaign: campaigners on the ground, digital campaign resources, and polling.

In comparison to an MP kickabout, a whisky bottle signed by every leader since Foot, and a night out at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club, last week’s Conservative fundraiser auctioned off a game of tennis with David Cameron and Boris Johnson (which sold for £160,000), champagne signed by Thatcher and an “eight-gun pheasant shoot”. It raised over half a million pounds for the Tory war chest.