Comic Relief 2021

I think there is still a place for a great live show but both Comic Relief and CiN seem to have got stuck in a rut and a predictable format each year relying more and more on filmed inserts rather than live studio stuff which was always the most unpredictable and exciting moments. The Big Night In showed how it could adapt for a much smaller scale show, but I really miss the Text Santa telethons on ITV. They felt fresh and kept it engaging and entertaining for the whole run time in the same way that Saturday Night Takeaway does week in week out, having a lot of fun but raising money for good causes at the same time!

CBBC Comic Relief ended up being preceded by Bitsa, which isn’t billed. I wonder if they just didn’t have enough to fill the show.
Some changes to the night itself too - French and Saunders actually were on before the news, culminating in the famous Hugh Grant kiss.

Yes, French and Saunders and Harry Enfield swapped over. It's been mentioned in the past - both by Richard Curtis and from people working in presentation on the web - that the Hugh Grant kiss was in danger of being faded out because it was so close to nine and the news absolutely had to start on time, Curtis said that Michael Hurll was directing and he could hear him talking to presentation at the time, saying "No, we can't stop, people have paid millions to see this" and going "not yet, not yet, not yet" until it finally happened and they went off air about two seconds later.

From a modern perspective, that seems a bizarre discussion, because what did it matter if the news was thirty seconds late, it happens quite frequently these days, but this was at the height of Birt's BBC when the news was considered absolutely the most important thing they did and was completely sacrosanct in the schedules. Although you'd have to say, it seems unlikely they really would have faded it out, you can imagine the complaints if such a much-publicised moment, which as Hurll said people had paid millions to see, wasn't shown because of the pedantic requirement to have the news starting dead on time. It would have ruined the whole evening.

Of course, this was also the same year that the first episode of the new series of Cracker had to be moved to a Sunday because it was over an hour long and if it was on during the week it would mean News at Ten couldn't start on time, and that couldn't happen. Although there was actually a reason for that because I remember reading quite a lot of the ITV companies had actually mentioned News at Ten in their franchise applications so they would have been technically breaching their licence commitments if it wasn't there. But it seems such a pointless thing to argue about these days.

The BBC2 comedy vote was won by The Young Ones on University Challenge. That was the usual Channel Four line-up at the time, not a particularly thrilling one, but at this point it still wasn't non-stop comedy on both BBC2 and C4 on Fridays. By 1997 that was the case and that was the first time they dropped the regular shows and put a film on instead.

Harry's bit was more suited to a post watershed slot. I wonder if it was moved for that reason or he adapted the act to be a bit ruder.

Today is Friday 19 March 2021 - Red Nose Day 2021. Yes everyone, another odd-numbered year means that two-yearly fundraising extravaganza for Comic Relief has come around again. Quite frankly though, as far as I'm concerned, today looks set to be just another plain, ordinary Friday. For starters, I'm not going to do anything silly with my hair or face, which is what people have been encouraged to do on Red Nose Day in past years. I've bought myself two Red Nose Day 2021 T-shirts from TK Maxx website (one grey Buzz T-shirt and one white Jessie T-shirt). I'm wearing my white Jessie T-shirt with pride today.

The Red Nose Day TV coverage looks a bit different this year to previous years. The main show will be on BBC One this evening from 19:00 to 22:00. After the news, The Great Comic Relief Prizeathon is on BBC One from 22:45 to 23:45. It's unclear whether that's a continuation of the main show, or a standalone show connected with Comic Relief 2021. After that, BBC One will be showing Gordon Ramsay's Bank Balance at 23:45, followed by Billy Monger's Big Red Nose Day Challenge from 00:30 to 01:30. In addition, BBC Two is showing Later - with Jools Holland for Comic Relief from 22:00 to 22:45, presumably intended as a filler against the news. All in all, an interesting looking line-up this evening. However this has left me wondering if the "proper" Red Nose Day show, with general entertainment, appeal films, money raised by Sainsbury's, TK Maxx, etc, running totals and so on is just from 19:00 to 22:00. For some mysterious reason, the three separate shows from 22:45 onwards (the last two of which I've noticed are marked as repeats in the TV listing I've seen) look like a replacement for having a continuous live "part two" show from 22:45 to well after midnight.

The question is, will any of tonight's line-up be worth watching? Each odd-numbered year from 2003 to 2015 I watched it off-air until late (usually midnight) and the rest on video next day. Looking back, I don't know how I tolerated sitting through them, because each time I thought the shows were predominantly a load of utter stupidity and tommyrot. Many of the sketches over the years have been terrible (e.g. Simon Cowell's wedding in 2013, Mr. Bean at the funeral in 2015). Unlike Children in Need TV shows in November, the Red Nose Day TV shows over the years featured very few pop songs (however in 2009 there was a Top of the Pops Red Nose Day special on BBC Two whilst the 10 o'clock News was on BBC One). I didn't bother watching any part of the Red Nose Day TV Shows in 2017 and 2019 as I thought the entertainment would be just as bad, if not worse.

For those of you who are fundraising for Red Nose Day 2021 today (within current lockdown rules / guidelines), happy fundraising.

I speak with absolute sincerity when I say it's lovely to have you back with us on the Forum for one last Red Nose Day, Tumble Tower.

These two old Off The Telly articles on Comic Relief are always worth a read, even if they were written 20 years ago (April 2001):

http://www.offthetelly.co.uk/oldott/www.offthetelly.co.uk/index5fb9.html?page_id=429

http://www.offthetelly.co.uk/oldott/www.offthetelly.co.uk/indexb4bc.html?page_id=431

So I see somebody's managed to fix the old Tumble Dryer, and hasn't replaced it with the all new TommyRot3000 edition!

Welcome back TT, well done.

On what?

I'm sure the right honourable Tumble Tower meant B1 as always.