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Red Nose Day fundraisers off to flier in bid for new record
Chris Benfield Britain will discover this morning whether its generosity has been over-stretched.
Last night was the final push to set a new record for fundraising by the charity Comic Relief.
And the big question was whether people would dig deep yet again, after the massive response to the Christmas tsunami disaster.
The BBC was rattling the national collecting tin until late last night, with a series of special Red Nose Day programmes. More than 18m was pledged by viewers in the first two hours.
On The Archers last night, actor and comedian Stephen Fry made a guest appearance which listeners had paid 13,000 to arrange. He competed with Ewan McGregor, Sir Ian McKellen and Liza Tarbuck for votes for a guest star to appear in a special episode written by Victoria Wood and called Victoria Goes To Ambridge. The 13,000 was raised from votes delivered by phone calls and text messages. Fry, 47, had appealed for votes by joking that the long-running radio soap opera was his main reason for living in Britain.
On TV, national treasures Robbie Williams and Sir Elton John made cameo appearances in a special edition of Little Britain.
Stephen Fry was back in the spotlight later in the evening, along with actor Hugh Grant, and Iranian comic Omid Djalili, in a southern team taking on the north in a University Challenge-style quiz, hosted by Angus Deayton. The northern team was writer Armando Iannucci, actor Neil Morrissey and DJ Colin Murray. Later, Radio 1 DJ Edith Bowman, comedian Adrian Edmondson and EastEnders actress Kim Medcalf were due to compete against each other in the final of a special celebrity version of Fame Academy.
Yesterday was the 10th Red Nose Day. It has become a biennial event since the first, in 1988, raised 16m.
The last one, in 2003, raised 61m, for charities operating in Britain and Africa.
Since its inception in 1985, Comic Relief has raised over 337m for 6,000 charity projects.
Its first event was a live broadcast from a refugee camp in Sudan, on Christmas Day, 1985.
Another early project was a version of Cliff Richard's Living Doll by the cast of cult comedy The Young Ones.
The first Red Nose Day, in 1988, spurred 20 million people to take part.
The money raised is spent 60 per cent in Africa and 40 per cent in Britain.
In Africa, money raised from the event goes to HIV and Aids sufferers and those affected by conflict.
In Africa, it has been estimated, a child dies of hunger and preventable diseases every three seconds and six people die of Aids every minute. In Britain, the beneficiaries are young people who are being bullied or are in crisis, older people, vulnerable refugees, people suffering from mental health problems and families fleeing domestic violence.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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