SINCE its inception back in 1988, Comic Relief has raised more than over £400 million to help disadvantaged children in both UK and Africa, thanks to its successful Red Nose Day campaign. Over the last few years, the record for fundraising in a campaign has always been broken and this year was no exception.
A massive £74.4 million was raised on the night on Friday and where as the final total on the last Red Nose Day finished up on just over £80 million, this figure is expected to topple this when the final totals are published in a few months time. In total, the biggest donations came from the following:
BT raised £1.7 million for their sponsorship of the Celebrity Desert Trek
Sainsbury’s raised £10 million for sales of official merchandise, a new record for the supermarket
TK Maxx raised £3 million for sales of official t-shirts
Maltesers raised £1.1 million for a public competition
Walkers raised £1.2 million for sales of four special crisp flavours
British Airways raised £801,000 for sales of special scratch cards on selected flights
BBC raised £2.9 for some of their stars attempting various tasks
The remaining £53.7 million was provided by public donations
BBC One again provided a full evening’s worth of entertainment to help fundraising initiatives. The programme featured comical sketches of Doctor Who, Outnumbered, Miranda and MasterChef, which featured an appearance by none other than Prime Minister David Cameron himself. Also, Blue Peter presenter Helen Skelton attempted to pull off a high wire walk between two of London’s tallest buildings and Radio 1’s Chris Moyles and Comedy Dave succeeded in fronting the station’s longest ever show, at a staggering 53 hours, setting a new Guinness World Record in the process.
David Walliams also proved his stern material to survive long hours by attempting to appear on as many panel shows in 24 hours. ’24 Hour Panel People’, which was broadcast on the BBC website, saw Walliams joined by a selection of guests to participate in various shows past and present, including 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Have I Got News For You, Never Mind The Buzzcocks and They Think It’s All Over.
Nine famous faces endured an energy-zapping trek across the Kenyan desert to raise nearly £2 million which featured Scott Mills, Lorraine Kelly, Kara Tointon, Dermot O’Leary and Olly Murs. Meanwhile, Ant and Dec were challenged by Comic Relief to gatecrash as many shows as they could in 24 hours unannounced and steal various items to auction off. Daybreak, This Morning, Loose Women and The One Show were among those that were targeted.
On the music front, the campaign has brought out two songs. Rising boy band The Wanted provided the official track ‘Gold Forever’, the first original song for Red Nose Day since 2005. However response of the track was largely negative. The other is another comical edition which has Peter Kay on board again, reprising his alter ego Geraldine McQueen to team up with Susan Boyle to perform ‘I Know Him So Well,’ originally sung by Elaine Page. As expected, this has gone down as a huge hit and it won’t be surprising if it claims top spot in the charts next Sunday.
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