Rarely can a knighthood have been more richly deserved than that awarded to Sir Terry Wogan.

Quite apart from his many years of entertaining the public on radio and television with his gently mocking Irish lilt, leaving aside his championing of that perpetual lost cause, the Eurovision Song Contest, Sir Terry deserved his knighthood for being the inspiration behind the annual Children in Need Appeal for a total (so far) of some 33 years.

There is something rather British about the keenness with which all sorts of people up and down the land volunteer to do dotty things and raise £31 million for good causes in the meanwhile.

That was in the same week we donated even more (about £33m at the time of writing) for disaster relief in the Philippines. Was it not great to see a Hercules C130 arriving with bulldozers and stores in that disaster area?

We can be a very generous people. Where else would the national lifeboat organisation be entirely paid for out of charitable donations? Where else would the air ambulance be paid for by charitable fundraising? These are things which we should be very proud. I am also proud of the fact that we are one of the few nations which has achieved the UN target of 0.7 per cent of GDP going to overseas aid.

Eradicating polio and malaria; saving thousands of children’s lives; enabling the world’s poorest people to feed and clothe themselves; and, of course, lending as big a hand as we can in disasters like that in the Philippines.

We have a moral obligation to do it, and as one of the largest economies in the world, we can well afford to do it as well. Now I do, of course, understand those people who will now write to me to tell me that there are all sorts of things wrong with this country, and that if we weren’t ‘wasting our money’ on overseas aid we could better spend it on x, y or z. ‘Charity begins at home’ is their well-worn phrase. I understand but I do not agree.

Overseas travel should be compulsory for we Brits. It would make us realise how jolly lucky we are by comparison with very large areas of the world; and I am not ashamed of my view that it is our duty and destiny to sacrifice some little part of our national wealth and comfort to ameliorate the worst deprivation, starvation and poverty round this globe.

We do it personally as the £65m we gave away this week demonstrates. It is only right that some part of our taxes should also go towards it.

Quite apart from altruism, it must also be in our long-term strategic advantage.