Comic Relief 2021

If for some reason you haven't kept your 3D glasses in a drawer for the last 30 years, you can put one lens of a pair of sunglasses over your right eye, or just squint it a bit.

The 1993 splat ones were made for the front of cars too, I remember seeing a few of them in our area years afterwards - fading away ungracefully and looking more like a splatted yellow tomato by the end.

I think my favourite RND was 1997. I remember the Spice Girls dominating the show, performing with an "alternate" version of the group called the Sugar Lumps, which featured Jennifer Saunders as Ginger and Dawn French as Posh. There was a real buzz about the live show around that time, and I remember feeling there was a real party atmosphere with guests hanging around and popping up here, there and everywhere during the broadcast. The Spice Girls, for example, definitely performed a few times and then reappeared for some of the later sketches with Lenny Henry.

After that and as the years went on, it seemed to get diluted and guests came on to do their bit then leave. It lost that feeling that everyone who was anyone was just there, hanging out and supporting each other (and the cause) all night long.

I still have the Pick of the Nose tape from 1997, including the furry case (as it was a furry nose that year), not bad considering it is 24 years old. I still have fonder memories of Comic Relief from the 1990’s than these days. The telethons from part of the 2000’s weren’t bad either.

I agree. It was always the case that Children in Need was a bit ‘establishment’ and Comic Relief was cooler and riskier and more likely that something crazy may happen.

Now they are indistinguishable as you say, the presenting pool is fairly similar, besides Lenny Henry, anyone doing Comic Relief could equally turn up and do Children in Need, and besides the addition of a token sports presenter or two, Sport Relief is just the same as well.

I wonder if there is now too much thinly spread. If anything is particularly stand out in a given year, it will be given a special programme on a different night, and then the actual telethon night will just plod along in the same tired manner.

Agreed. Comic Relief was the sixth form end of term concert, to Children In Need's Christmas play that looked like it was practiced and worked on for weeks.

The very first live Comic Relief was excellent. It had a very loose feel and presented as if Griff, Lenny and Jonathan couldn't believe BBC One had given them 7 hours of prime time television.

A good mix of prerecorded material, and woeful under-rehearsed studio linking made it totally watchable.

I'll always contend that most people only watched CIN in the mid-late 80's to see the technicals fail, and for Sir Tel to wing it and pick up the pieces.

Let me ask this - Do we think it is time to end these telethon nights for Comic Relief, Sport Relief and Children in Need? Have they had their day, and maybe the BBC needs to do something different.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

It’s a shame 2017 was such an utter disaster because I think their intentions were good; they were trying to update it and do something very different and you can see what they were hoping to achieve. But the people who made it were really not the right people to execute it and it’s amazing how way off the mark they were with it all.

Bit harsh Phil:



In my defence I have warmed more to Vic and Bob since then, but as I recall I didn't really like the sketch they did on stage with Susanna Reid.

They raise huge amounts of money. So no.

The good thing is however poor the night is the total usually isn't and they can simply reset the next time around. I do think they have struggled in recent years passing the baton on to the next generation of comics and presenters - this years line up is similar to that of ten years ago (or maybe even more).

The listings for 1995 came up on Twitter earlier.

TV1995: Here's what was on TV on this day back in 1995 (Friday) 17 March 1995. Any favourites / memories here? @transdiffusion pic.twitter.com/yf650YufHS

— Russty Russ - #Retro (@russty_russ) March 17, 2021

A strong line up for the time, but also a perfect template of having presenters that change every hour and then sketches which are split into parts airing across various slots.

I'm baffled why anyone would sit through them these days rather than catching up with the 20 minutes of half decent content, but they still bring in decent viewers and more importantly raise tens of millions of pounds for charity, so they're not going anywhere any time soon.

That is a strong line up.

Other take outs from that include how Comic Relief is spread across the day from The Big Breakfast to Pebble Mill and then the special CBBC Show.

Also how other channels would get involved, it seemed more at arms length from the BBC back then, so you had Chris Evans hosting a Don’t forget your Toothbrush style hour, not to mention Comic Relief featuring on The Big Breakfast as already mentioned. Channel 4 used to suspend its usual strong Friday night comedy line up that week as well (although I can’t tell if that’s the case here or not). All of that has of course stopped, the telethon part is now pretty much a BBC only event