Should elderly people pay to be 'entertained' by a student?

For most people, spending time with an elderly relative is something you do for love, not money. If, however, you really can't be bothered, there is a solution: pay a straight-A student from Oxbridge to do it instead.

Two young men have come up with a business based entirely on the model that an elderly person might want to pay £30 to be "entertained" by a student.

Eldertainment, (which has disappeared to be updated since yesterday), is the brainchild of Heneage and William Stevenson. They say it is a way for students to fund their way through university, do something for the social good and generate relationships between two of the most ignored groups of our society – students and the elderly.



David Sinclair, the head of policy for Help the Aged, found the concept "patronising". He said: "Why would an old person go for it? Shouldn't it be the other way round?"

A poor student who checked it out said: "This business completely undermines hundreds of charities that have been set up to specifically provide befriending schemes using volunteers. The idea that people should have to pay for this type of service is disappointing; how students can take the money, I do not know."

Unsurprisingly, the Stevenson boys don't come from the average family. Their father is Lord Stevenson, who was in parliament the other day being grilled on his job as former chairman of the troubled bank HBOS. He took £750,000 home in 2007, so he may not be calling on the services of Eldertainment just yet, but at least he knows they will look after him in his old age.