Rebecca Lafferty

ALT Watching Deal or No Deal, a game show, Michael saw a man talking about his wife's need for costly fertility treatments. He sent them an anonymous £15,000 grant. One day he observed a woman crying in a café; he said hello, and she confessed she was mired in debt. He sent her £25,000. Michael tipped a bartender £5,000 when he learned she was struggling to repay a loan for her nursing studies. Periodically he loaded up his Range Rover with soup and sandwiches made in his home and drove to Cardboard City, a food dispensary in the poor London neighborhood of Holborn. He doled out meals by hand, chatting freely. "The funniest thing about it all is that no one seems to recognize him," said a fellow volunteer. "He comes down in jeans and a baseball cap and mucks in with the rest of us. The youngsters often tell him he looks like George Michael and he laughs and says people tell him that all the time. When anyone asks what he does for a living, he tells them he's self-employed."