Roddick wins bidding battle as 'Independent' readers raise £26,000 in auction

A last-minute rush of online bids in The Independent's Ultimate Auction yesterday added thousands of pounds to the final total raised. When bidding closed at lunchtime, £26,213.41 had been pledged to our "Hope for Africa" Christmas Appeal.

The top bidder was Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop – or as our website, which gave the address of each bidder, put it – Anita Roddick of Swindon. She offered £1,800 for the privilege of spending a day at The Independent.

There were several other winning bids in excess of £1,000: for a talk by columnist Fergal Keane (£1,500); a Leicester Square film première with Charlotte O'Sullivan (£1,350); an Indian meal cooked by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (£1,326); and a place in the newspaper's box at Twickenham for a Six Nations tournament (£1,257).

Among other well-known names to bid was the publisher and critic Ion Trewin, who edited the Alan Clark Diaries. He offered £1,206 for Anna Pavord to visit his garden and give him advice.

Other top bids included £1,111 for a day in Paris with the travel writer Simon Calder; £1,100 for a meal cooked by our food writer Mark Hix, of The Ivy and Le Caprice; and £1,061 for a fashion, hair and beauty makeover from the style consultant Beth Dadswell. An evening swanning around literary London with John Walsh yielded £1,007,while lunch with Simon Kelner, editor of The Independent, fetched £1,000.

There were also off-piste suggestions from enterprising bidders who offered £200 for a talk from The Independent's ethics and religion commentator, Paul Vallely, and £70 for lunch with the parliamentary sketch writer, Simon Carr.

Yesterday, the overall figure was £100,804.50, including a one-off cheque for £14,000. The grand total to date is £127,017.91.