BBC Children In Need 2001

PA's listings say there are five opts, at 8.05, 8.50 and 9.45 - then 10.40 and 11.20 in the second half - I reckon this may be one less than last year.

I think the reason it doesn't work is because what's the point of going back to the same place five times? They're always scraping around for material towards the end and the opts are quite long, 4-7 minutes each if I remember correctly from last year.

At one stage in the evening there was an optional opt as well (again I know this from the web feed), we certainly didn't take it in the South east and they didn't seem to bothered in the gallery about segueing it into the rest of the programme.

Southampton always seems to get to be the first choice of region for this sort of thing so I'd put a small amount of money on them going out on DSAT at five-past eight.

and my 'estate' for Owen to do it - a very nice PE teacher at my school.

Yeah I spotted that too and there was also Darren Jordan somewhere among them.

Looking forward to it!

There are no regional opt-outs during Children In Need this year

Which is nice (they're normally very very dull)

Anyone want to guess who Kathrine would like to see strip.

Anyhow, In the trailer with the car washing there is also a bit of Darren Jordan moonwalking trough the newscentre. nice.

Well BBC Scotland are having regional opt-outs! So I just hope that doesn't mean that we're getting Scotlands version of Children in need all night!

It will be interesting to see how and what the new regions do:

The last year or so DSat has carried a different region for each opt - effectively they don't opt out and are put out on the network (and on terrestrial all the other regions opt out!)

Tunbridge Wells doesn't do its own features programming - so may possibly take Southampton or London - but then Nottingham doesn't do features and does do its own CiN opts...

Historically Elstree always did a big OB from somewhere - I hope London continue this rather than trying to Pudsey up the LDN newsroom...

Also - I believe that some of the big name pop acts are NOT in the main TVC studio, but at regional sites, so it may be that some regions have been given more money to do proper OBs both for the Network show and their regional opts.

Southampton have always done really good OBs anyway - though a few years ago Norwich was rather good as well (Sarah Vandenburg from Neighbours presented with Stewart White) - they had OBs everywhere across the region. (It was wonderfully vision mixed as well )

Yeah I noticed the masses trailers showing for BBC Scotland at the moment but what threw me off was that there was no mention of any scottish opt out like when Hazel Irvine done trailers last year, in my opinion its missleading as it looks as though its just a normal CIN trailer but with the BBC Scotland logo.

Yes, I think you've all got a little confused here.

There ARE regional opts, BUT they're not live.

In the West we're putting out three pre-recoreded packages.

There's barely any regional involvement in CIN this year.

Well BBC executives always want Children in Need to be more like Comic Relief - which doesn't split the evening with regional opts - so I suppose they just want a more continuous programme...

Oh and I was so hoping to see Christa Ackroyd and Helen Philpot in a pair of matching yellow Pudsey Bear sweatshirts !

Come on, you know it's always Peter Levy in the Pudsey sweatshirt...