Sport Relief

Back to the evening...

I loved the moment when Gary interviewed the celebs who played the cricket match and mentioned that Patrick Kielty couldn't be there tonight as he was "helping some other people...Z list celebs in another country".

Ohh any excuse for another dig at Love Island but shame on Kielty for not being there!

There were quite a few digs at Love Island throughout the night!


I quite enjoyed it actually - though skipped about three hours for Poker Face and Big Brother!

It ran alot more smoothly than Children in Need and I felt all three presenters actually got the tone about right.


Yes, the standard features but at least it wasn't padded out with people plugging their latest single. I only saw two performances all night!


One thing I did want to pick up on though is how these charity telethons allow for some blatant product placement!

Is this the first Sport Relief night, as in coverage similar to Comic Relief ect. I know there has been Sport Relief before with the mile run thing, but i dont recall a TV Event like last nights.

No, the last two both had Saturday night telethons.

The first one was very low key. IIRC it was presented by Linker & Ulrika Johnson, the set was built to resemble a sports bar with the -tiny - studio audience sat at tables. I didn't see the second one, and this year just seeing in the TV Guide "Presented by Garry Lineker, Davina McCall & Chris Evans" was 3 good reasons for me to stay well away.

Was the regional opt-out (for a highlights package from the local Sport Relief Mile OB) a new departure this year?

It was also nice to see the programme in the morning with lots of contributions from the regions - which certainly seemed to have been produced by the regions themselves, rather than an OB staged by network that just happenned to be on their patch - which is what CiN regional contribs seem to consist of these days.

Did the Channel Islands get an opt out of their own?

Nope, they had the Plymouth opt with Andy Breare and Natalie Cornah. I don't think the Channel Islands were doing anything regarding the Sport Relief mile etc were they?

The Sport Relief run in the morning only had contributions from full BBC regions - so no Cambridge, Oxford or Jersey contributions. Also, BBC London didn't have to do a sequence for the morning show, as the network OB was based in London (on the Embankment)

Most of the other OBs used regional presenters and regional facilities by the look of it (though Jill Douglas was in Nottingham)