Celebrity cards aid tsunami victims

EDINBURGH, Scotland, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- The British artist David Hockney was one of many celebrities who have helped a British student raise money to help the victims of the Asian Tsunami.

Other contributors, in addition to artists, included Paul McCartney, actors Bill Nighy and Elizabeth Hurley and the novelist Joanna Trollope. Daisy Bell, a student at Edinburgh University, sent them blank postcards and asked them to return them with drawings, The Scotsman reported.

The money is to be given in memory of Bell's uncle, Robin Needham, one of the thousands of people who died in the wave set off by an undersea earthquake. Needham, who worked for the international aid group CARE for 25 years, was the head of Care-Nepal at the time of his death. He was taking a Christmas break in Thailand when the tsunami struck.

Hockney contributed a small ink drawing of a Yorkshire landscape to the on-line fundraising auction, The Telegraph reported.

By Monday, the auction had raised almost 50 thousand pounds ($88,000), ten times what Bell originally hoped, with a few hours to go.