Yesterday, this years Comic Relief appeal reached it’s climax with eight hours of TV on BBC1 and BBC2. Yet again it pulled in the donations at a fantastic rate, reaching the fantastic total of £40,236,142 by the end of the night (as a comparison, the BBC’s own Children in Need managed £18,300,392 last year).
The show included the conclusion of The Apprentice Does Comic Relief, that I wrote about yesterday. It finished up with Sugar choosing between Campbell and Morgan for the nominal firing – he went for Morgan in the end, which had been hinted at from the start in that in his start of show interview he was the only one seen commenting that he didn’t want to get fired! To be honest the best moments of that can be found in the first part of the show on Thursday – Campbell and Morgan trying to get the other one fired was amusing, but really a postscript to the main programme.
As usual, the show included a mix of hard hitting documentary sequences showing some of the areas the appeal aims to help in both the UK and Africa, and special comedy sketches. The comedy sketches were a bit hit or miss, with the Vicar of Dibley special, whilst having some funny moments, not being the best, and a live Mitchell and Webb sketch that was greeted with pretty well total silence by the live audience. However, Harry Hill provided what was pretty well a TV Burp Greatest Hits, and there were some star studded sequences from the special Little Britain Live. Peter Kay produced a memorable musical number to follow up Amarillo from last time. This time it was the old Proclaimers number, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)â€? along with Matt Lucas. The video includes an unbelievable range of celebrities, including Lord Lucan and Shergar according to the credits. The video and song are available from iTunes and is going for a record in terms of being the fastest selling online song – we’ve been star spotting in the video, and about the only non-dead celeb who is credited that we can’t spot so far is David Beckham.
The sketches that we laughed at most though, were two of the Catherine Tate ones with a variety of famous people. The first includes David Tennant as a new English teacher, which if you watch, you’ll realise quite why Beth likes it…
The second was just amazing, as it includes Tony Blair, who actually gets a number of the funny lines…
All of the Catherine Tate sketches from the night, together with some bonus material will be available on DVD on April 9th, and is available from Amazon amongst others.
Whilst on the subject of fund-raising goodies, check out Shaggy Blog Stories, a book of one hundred funny blog postings pulled together by Mike Atkinson, and including contributions from a real mix of famous and not so famous UK bloggers, including Dave Walker from Cartoon Church.
[...] What People Are Saying Having a Laugh with Comic Relief … available from iTunes and is going for a record in terms of being the fastest selling online song – we?ve been star spotting in the video, and about the only non-dead celeb who is credited that we can?t spot so far is David Beckham. …Rearview Mirror: Looking Back at the Week on Towleroad Larry Kramer gives ACT UP anniversary speech (text), holds Times Square protest. NY Governor Elliott Spitzer says no to St. Pat’s Parade to support gays? PLUS: Terrence Howard, Adam Sandler, Eric Winter, David Beckham, 12 Pack.DAVID AND VICTORIA BECKHAM'S ROMANCE David Beckham treated wife Victoria to a romantic night in a hotel for their tenth anniversary.The soccer star took Victoria to Manchester’s five star Lowry Hotel after watching his former team Manchester United play at their home …Adidas ADIDAS ??????98 ??-> 0 ??-> 98 ??Gilbert Arenas ????0 ??David Beckham 98???????(????̷ 3/17/2007: Books: Rowling books among hardest to finish London ? Best-sellers by Bill Clinton, JK Rowling and David Beckham are among the books that people in the UK find the hardest to finish reading, according to a survey published this week. Although the average reader spends more than …L'equipe article That night, David Beckham compared him to a ballerina for the sheer grace of his movement, control and passing. Unfortunately, the last dance approaches. And you would have to be blind not to notice that those fleet-footed steps are …Weekend reading: Becks as a (shrilly yapping) manager Since I’ve already established that David Beckham is an appropriate topic for a business and economics blog, I thought I’d share this, from the Guardian blog of hairy English pop-culture phenomenon Russell Brand. …Inside David & Victoria Beckham's 10th Anniversary [link][more] March 17th 2007 Posted to David Beckham [...]