Comic Relief 2013 - Mildly Amusing at Times for Money

Certainly the former was, and I'd assume the latter too:



There's a similar report for 2011 somewhere, which clarifies that the £10m DfID funding was included in that total.

Only four days later, but:

Comic Relief Archbishop sketch draws 2200 complaints

In what way don't I understand the concept of Comic Relief, the humour presented in Comic Relief 2013 or comedy generally? Please try to explain.

As I've already said, the various entertainers us RCCGB members have had at the Friday evening function of the Blackpool Bash April 2008 to 2012 have given some first class entertainment. You've seen my list of entertainers that we've had. Much better than the boring dross of Comic Relief - Funny For Money last Friday evening.

The changes you have suggested for Comic Relief are to move it away from the premise of being comic, and towards poor-quality cabaret style entertainment and music, neither which fits the criterion of comedy.

The Roller Coaster Club of Great Britain may enjoy cabaret style entertainment, and watching Nicholas "Nemesis Nick" "Tumble Tower" Willmott humiliate himself on stage - however, this is not appropriate for a night of comedy.

The fact you enjoy the former, and not the latter, suggests to me that you do not fully comprehend the comedy presented during the 2013 edition of Comic Relief.

I have a vague recollection of you not realising a parody of TV show Dragon's Den set in the Victorian times by Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield was designed as piece of comedy and not a special edition of the programme.

I feel to a large majority of the population this would have been obvious. Which leads leads me to think you're idea of comedy is different to the masses a show like Comic Relief needs to appeal to.

Are you referring to the list of things I said should have featured in the RND 2009 line-up, in place of what was shown? Just for the record, here's a reminder of the list. Are you saying that the things I suggested are cabaret style entertainment? What do you personally define as cabaret style entertainment?


Well remembered Jon, the bit you're referring to is Victorian Dragon's Den which featured in RND 2009. There were in fact three separate instalments, each covering a different item: toothbrush, flush toilet, TV. All things we all now take for granted anyway, not things to feature on Dragon's Den. Okay I cottoned on that, if that Dragon's Den Special was set in the Victorian era, the toothbrush, flush toilet and TV must have been innovative inventions in then.

However I pointed out here that when John Logie Baird invented TV, he began by experimenting with a spinning disc, not a cathode ray tube. When the Marconi-EMI 405 line system became the standard, it was black and white, colour was a later leap. The CRT TV set shown in Victorian Dragon's Den during RND 2009 was colour, which I criticised as a stupid time paradox. That's why I had so many gripes about Victorian Dragon's Den in RND 2009, and said it should have been omitted from the show and replaced with something else.

Now you're just nitpicking with information that's utterly irrelevant to the actual thread, thus taking it off-topic.

I think we should start calling you Tumble Dryer, since you're so full of hot air!

No, I was just talking about Victorian Dragon's Den in RND 2009; explaining why I felt it was such a load of rubbish and why I hated it so much (and thus felt it should have been dropped and replaced with something else).

Over the years I've written reviews of the Red Nose Day telethon. Here they are from 2003 to 2011 inclusive. Instead of posting them here (thereby creating an unwieldly long post) I've put them on my blog, with links to the individual years below.

RND 2003
RND 2005
RND 2007
RND 2009
RND 2011

As you can see, I said RND 2005 was bad enough, RND 2007 was worse and RND 2009 was even worse still. Thankfully I found RND 2011 a bit better than RND 2009. What a pity RND 2013 was so dull and boring.
Have a read of these reviews and air your feedback here. Feel free to quote bits of my reviews here if necessary.

A joke is like a frog - once you disect it, it dies.

Well that's obvious, disect any animal and it will die.

Are you saying I've been disecting jokes in past RNDs, in this particular case disecting Victorian Dragon's Den in RND 2009 with my criticism about the toothbrush, flush toilet and TV? The point is, I didn't see anything funny in the three instalments of Victorian Dragon's Den in 2009, I just thought they were a load of rubbish, for the reasons I've already explained. Please let me know of someone who actually found those sketches funny / amusing.

Okay, enough of harping back to sketches in past RNDs. I'll now comment on one of the sketches in RND 2013: Simon Cowell's Wedding.

All rise please for the bride: bride entered accompanied by "Here Comes The Bride". Okay so far, what would be expected in a wedding. What a pity it was disturbed by a couple members of the congregation making pointless comments.

Reading (in the pulpit): Take That's Greatest Hits. First bit of stupidity, surely you'd have a reading from the Bible in a wedding service.

Choir hymn: "So Macho". That was a 1980s pop song by Sinitta. The only thing was they sang it in a choral key, accompanied by the organ. Fancy trying to turn a pop song into a hymn. Why didn't they have a proper hymn?

Wedding vows
I Simon Tyrone Cowell - well that's normal, you start with your name in wedding vows.
Global television style legendary music mogul who's changed the face of popular culture - why was this here? You don't get this in wedding vows.

Complete chaos followed this:
Suddenly David Walliams ran in and shouted "Stop the wedding", followed by a load of waffle.
Olly Murs ran in and shouted "Stop the wedding" and said a bit.
Dermot O Leary ran in and shouted "Stop the wedding".
Louis Walsh ran in and shouted "Stop the wedding", followed by more waffle.
Eventually the vicar shouted "Enough" and Simon said "It's 4 no's I'm afraid".
Someone else ran in. The vicar shouted "Silence" I think he must have been getting fed up. Honestly and seriously, don't you think it was downright rude for those five people to walk in and interrupt a wedding like that? That wouldn't be tolerated in a real wedding.

The vicar said "You may kiss the bride" and it suddenly emerged that the bride, dressed in a white wedding dress, was just a clone of Simon Cowell himself. How stupid!

Summing up, that whole wedding sketch was a load of garbage and tommy rot. A real wedding wouldn't go like that. Call that comedy? I didn't think it was in the slightetst bit funny. Annoyingly they weren't content to show the wedding just once, they repeated it later in the evening.

May I print this, frame it and hang it on my office wall???? Please???? This is the best post I've ever read on TVF in my whole ten years of being here.